


Lab Safety

by orangina



Series: Lab Safety Verse [1]
Category: Football RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Angst, Arguing, Eventual Smut, Family, Fluff, German National Team, Hate to Love, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, M/M, References to Drugs, Secrets, Slow Build, Teenage boys are idiots
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-21
Updated: 2015-03-30
Packaged: 2018-02-26 11:12:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 32
Words: 111,585
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2649941
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orangina/pseuds/orangina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Benedikt thinks he doesn't care who he gets assigned to work with on the chemistry project. Until he finds out he has to work with Mats Hummels, which translates into not really working "with" Mats Hummels, but rather Benedikt works by himself and slaps Mats' name on when he's finished.</p><p>It should be just a project. But the more Benedikt finds out about Mats, the more he's determined to help him, all while liking him a little more than he should along the way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Hey! Here's a new fic. I hope it doesn't suck :)
> 
> A few notes about this fic:  
> -I don't specify a location, but I do live in the United States so the cultural aspect of this fic will probably be very American. The one exception to this is that I will refer to the sport of football as 'football' and not 'soccer' :)
> 
> -Both Benni's and Mats' parents play a pretty big role in this fic. I have completely fictionalized the parents. I don't use their real names and I don't imagine them looking anything like the real parents do.
> 
> -Please forgive any mistakes I may make. Some of the things these characters have been through I have been through as well and am writing from experience, but others I have not and am using pure imagination
> 
> -I know this fic is very long…but even if you've just started, it'll still mean a lot to me if you leave a comment even if it isn't on the latest chapter :)
> 
> -I used to have notes for each chapter but I'm gonna go through and remove them now that the story's complete so it's more organized

2:38.

Only six more minutes until school was finally over. Benedikt tapped his fingers on his desk as he stared at the second hand, watching it as it made its slow round about the clock.

It really sucked to have chemistry at the end of the day. It was only the second week of school, and Benedikt was already exhausted long before 7th period rolled around each day. He figured it wasn’t too late to try and get his schedule switched around… But what real difference would that make? Chemistry was chemistry, whether it took place at 8 in the morning or 2 in the afternoon.

Benedikt groaned inwardly as he remembered they hadn’t even gone into real chemistry yet. In fact, the teacher was currently reading out the partners he had assigned for a lab safety project. Benedikt didn’t really care who his partner was; he got along well with most people.

“Mario Götze and Marco Reus,” Mr. Löw announced.

Half the class snickered as Marco and Mario exchanged a fist bump. Poor Mr. Löw obviously hadn’t the slightest idea what a mistake he had made.

What other names had already been called? Benedikt hadn’t been listening. He assumed by the chatter slowly filling the room that most people had already been assigned their partners.

“Thomas Müller and Manuel Neuer.”

Thomas squealed then quickly covered up his mouth, looking embarrassed. Manuel blushed heavily and looked out the window. Benedikt tried to catch his friend’s eye, but the blond seemed to have developed a sudden interest in oak trees.

“Benedikt Höwedes and Mats Hummels.”

“What?!” said Benedikt loudly. There was scattered laughter throughout the room. This was a typical reaction by anyone told they were to be working with Mats Hummels.

Benedikt couldn’t believe it. Out of everyone he could’ve been partnered with, he had to be with _Mats?_ Mats Hummels was easily the biggest douchebag in the whole school, not to mention the laziest and worst student. Mats Hummels spent more time each day smoking weed than he spent at school.

Mr. Löw raised an eyebrow. “Is there a problem, Höwedes?”

Benedikt felt his cheeks heat up. “No. Sorry.” He nervously ran a hand through his hair while Mr. Löw gave him a warning look.

Finally, Mr. Löw refocused his attention to his computer screen. He cleared his throat and the room immediately grew silent. He didn’t even look at the class as he spoke, clearly and sternly.

“Everyone should have received their partners now. If your name was not called, please come see me. You will have two days in class to work on this project; the rest is to be completed outside of class. There are cameras available for rent in the library if you wish to present your project in the form of a video. I expect high quality work and for both partners to contribute equally to this project” (Benedikt pursed his lips). “I do not want to have to deal with any problems that may arise within your group. You are all young adults who are capable of working out your own differences” (Benedikt bit back a wince). “Now, good luck. You are all dismissed when the bell rings.”

Benedikt could’ve sworn the man was speaking directly to him.

After Mr. Löw finished, the room gradually increased in volume again and Benedikt let out a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding. He shoved his papers into his binder and stuffed everything messily into his backpack.

This was just his luck.

Benedikt had never before spoken a single word to Mats Hummels, and he hadn’t planned on changing anything. Looks like that was all about to come to an abrupt end. 

He didn’t even bother to glance towards the back of the room to see what his new partner was doing. He’d deal with that tomorrow.

Finally, the bell rang and the class filed out the door, Benedikt among the first to escape. He waited for Manuel in the hallway.

Manuel was _still_ blushing and shiny-eyed when he approached Benedikt. “Shit,” he muttered.

Benedikt smiled smugly at him. “When you go over to his house, just remember it’s _lab_ safety, not--”

“Okay, okay, yes,” Manuel snapped, effectively cutting his amused friend off. He didn’t need to be reminded about that _one_ time where things just… happened. Accidentally.

“Hey, at least Thomas will actually help you with the project. Then you’ll finish it and it’ll all be over within a week. Mats, on the other hand… It’ll be June and I’ll still be begging him to take out his earbuds and pay attention to me,” Benedikt pointed out.

“Don’t even bother. Just do the whole thing by yourself, that’ll be a whole lot easier on both of you,” Manuel suggested.

Benedikt sighed dramatically.

“You’ll waste your energy being pissed off at him. He’s not going to contribute, he’s not going to respect you and that’s not going to change. I say just let it go,” said Manuel casually, as if he were an expert on dealing with Mats Hummels.

They stopped at Manuel’s locker and Benedikt watched him spin the dial without really seeing anything.

_Manuel’s right. It’s way too early in the school year for this._


	2. A Rough Start

“Mats.”

“Mats.”

“ _Mats._ ”

Benedikt was sitting in the back of the classroom next to Mats, who apparently was not aware that he had company. The rest of the class had begun brainstorming for their presentations; Manuel and Thomas awkwardly avoiding eye contact as they alternated adding to a list, Mario and Marco doing a lot more laughing than discussing, and Bastian and Lukas too busy making heart eyes at each other to even consider safety in the lab.

“Mats.”

Benedikt rolled his eyes. Mats had buried his head in his arms on top of the desk, his dark hair flopping across his forehead. Benedikt could hear music coming out of his earbuds; no wonder Mats hadn’t responded after the 50th time Benedikt said his name.

So much for the approach of being patient. Benedikt reached over and yanked out one of Mats’ earbuds.

Mats opened one eye and noticed Benedikt looking at him in disgust.

“Welcome to chemistry,” said Benedikt with as much sarcasm as he could.

“Huh?” Mats grunted, rubbing his eyes.

“My name is Benedikt. We’re doing a project together, so maybe we should get started on that.”

“I know.”

Benedikt raised an eyebrow. “Know what?”

“I know that your name is Benedikt. We’ve been going to same school for ten years,” Mats said. Then, much to Benedikt’s surprise, he sat up and pulled out his other earbud.

“And you’ve been high the whole time, so how would you know?” Benedikt challenged him.

“I only smoke in the morning. It wears off by lunchtime,” Mats explained, shrugging his shoulders.

Benedikt stared at him. Despite what Mats said, he still looked totally out of it. But he likely always looked like that.

After a moment, Mats started to put his earbuds back in.

“Wait a second,” Benedikt interrupted.

Mats paused and focused on Benedikt again. “What do you want?”

“I want you to help me with this project. Please.” Benedikt bit his bottom lip. Either this would go well or it wouldn’t.

“Hell no,” Mats mumbled. “You can do it, buddy. I’m out.” Then he stuck his earbuds in and returned to his nap.

“ _‘Buddy?’_ Are you kidding me?” Benedikt shot. But Mats had already zoned out again. Benedikt swore and stood up, shaking his head. Then he stalked out of the classroom, drawing much more attention to himself that he would have liked.

He reached the water fountain and bent over for a drink. When he was finished, he stood up and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

Why was he getting so upset over this? He hadn’t even expected Mats to speak to him; Mats had _exceeded_ his expectations. He had prepared for the worst. He had even begun working on the project by himself. So what was the problem?

Benedikt didn’t really want to go back to class, but he couldn’t think of anywhere else to go and besides, his stuff was still in there. Grudgingly, he made his way back to the classroom where he found Mr. Löw waiting outside the door for him.

Benedikt froze several meters away and his eyes widened.

“Come here, Höwedes,” Mr. Löw instructed in the kindest voice Benedikt had heard him use so far, though it was still far from friendly; Mr. Löw had established himself as a figure not to mess with.

Benedikt gulped as he edged closer. Mr. Löw placed a hand on his shoulder and looked at him critically. Benedikt blinked under his intense stare.

“Benedikt, is it?” Mr. Löw asked (he wasn’t accustomed to the first names of his students). Benedikt nodded in response. “Benedikt, though it may only be the second week of school, I know more about my students than one may think. I assigned you to work with Mr. Hummels because I know you have the ability to help him. My hope was that you would encourage him to work and set a precedent for the rest of the school year.”

“Mr. Löw, I’m sorry but I don’t think you understand. Mats is---” Benedikt chimed in.

“I don’t want to hear it. Consequently, the reason Mats is so reluctant to do any work is because no one will give him the chance. Everyone expects him to fail so that is precisely what he does. Don’t let that happen, Höwedes. You can do better than that. Give Mr. Hummels a chance,” Mr. Löw said seriously. “Can you do that for me?”

“I don’t know,” Benedikt mumbled. He felt his face growing warm and his underarms getting wet. He looked at the ground.

“I need an answer, Höwedes.”

“Okay,” Benedikt said unconvincingly. How the hell was he supposed to force Mats to work? Mats probably hadn’t even written his own name on a worksheet since kindergarten.

Mr. Löw squeezed Benedikt’s shoulder then steered him into the classroom. “I trust you, Höwedes. Don’t disappoint me,” he said quietly.

Benedikt sucked in a breath once Mr. Löw had returned to his desk. Though he felt liberated from Mr. Löw’s intimidation, another immense pressure had fallen onto his shoulders: the weight of fixing Mats Hummels. Mr. Löw expected it of him and there was no avoiding it.

Benedikt glanced at the clock, hoping there wouldn’t be enough time to return to the back of the classroom and try to reason with Mats. But it was only 2:03. There was plenty of time.

Sighing, Benedikt slowly made his way to the back of the room and collapsed in the desk next to Mats once again.

Mats was snoring. Actually _snoring_.

Benedikt gritted his teeth and rapped on the wood next to Mats’ ear. Mats just groaned and rolled his head over to the other side.

“Come on…” Benedikt grumbled. He really didn’t want to have to shake Mats awake, but it looked like that was what things had come to. Before he could stop himself, he placed a hand on Mats’ side and shoved him.

Well, that worked.

Mats opened his eyes, looking dazed and thoroughly annoyed at being woken up.

“Fuck off,” he grumbled. “I’m not going to do the fucking project, leave me the fuck alone.”

Benedikt snorted. “Wow. You know how to use the word ‘fuck.’ Good for you!”

“Shut the fuck up.”

“Really? That’s the best you can come up with?”

“Whatever,” Mats said. “I don’t care. Just leave me alone. I’m not going to help you with the project so save your breath.”

Remembering what Mr. Löw told him, Benedikt folded his arms, refusing to break eye contact. “Why not?”

Mats looked angry at being asked this question; it was as if no one had ever questioned him before. He abruptly pushed himself up, visibly struggling for an explanation.

Benedikt breathed deeply through his nose, eyes locked on Mats. This was going to be a difficult-to-impossible task, and frustration would most likely get the better of him.

“You know, Mats, if we were working on this individually I couldn’t care less about whether you did the project or not. But seeing as you’re my partner, it’s kind of unfair for you to just dump everything on me,” Benedikt told him. “It’s selfish. And really douchey.”

Mats narrowed his eyes. “What did you just say about me?”

Benedikt sighed. “Nothing. Forget it. I’ll just do the project by myself. I give up, Mats.” He shook his head slightly and rested his elbows on the desk, burying his face in his hands. Manuel had been right, after all; Mats wasn’t even worth the effort. Not even ten minutes had gone by and Benedikt was already drained.

 _It’s not a big deal,_ he thought. Realistically, he could knock out this project working alone in two hours. Adding a partner into the mix just complicates things, after all, even when your partner is competent.

Benedikt ran his fingers along his hairline, trying to figure out why the hell this was bothering him so much.

“Benedikt.”

“ _What_ , Mats Hummels?” Benedikt groaned into his hands.

“Do you want to know why I won’t do the project with you?” Was that...sincerity in Mats’ voice?

“Not really. If you’re not going to help me, I don’t want to hear your lame excuses,” Benedikt admitted, sounding utterly defeated.

Benedikt heard something slam against Mats’ desk. Several people turned around, and the room grew silent.

“Fuck this!” Mats shouted, standing up and slinging his backpack over his shoulder. “This is bullshit, I’m leaving!”

Benedikt looked through his fingers to see Mats kick his chair out of the way and storm out of the room, slamming the door and grumbling on his way out.

Silence.

Mats Hummels never made big scenes like that during class. Mats Hummels always sat in the back of the room, being high and minding his own business (usually sleeping).

“Please continue working,” Mr. Löw ordered. No one dared disobey. No questions were asked and the room slowly filled with voices and the sound of pen on paper again.

Benedikt avoided looking at Mr. Löw for the rest of the period. He wasn’t in the mood for a lecture today. Instead, he pulled out the piece of paper he had started taking notes on. He spent the rest of the class doodling stars in the margin.

What was it like to be Mats Hummels? What was it like to blatantly ignore all your responsibilities and breeze through life not giving a shit about anything?

 _It probably sucks,_ Benedikt concluded. He filled in one of the stars he had drawn.

And why would someone decide to be that way in the first place?

 _Selfishness_.

But… that couldn’t be it. Sure, Mats was getting temporary relief from his life and responsibilities. What was he gaining in the long run, though? Nothing, really. He was only hurting himself. Still… Mats was selfish, whether he was doing what was best for himself or not. The main thing was that Mats Hummels had no concern for other people.

Before Benedikt could confuse himself too much, he felt his phone vibrate in his pocket.

_From: Manu_

_What happened? Hummels went ham._

_To: Manu_

_Don’t it worry about it._

When the bell rang, Benedikt didn’t wait for Manuel. He felt too weird. He just wanted to go home and take a nap.


	3. Erik Durm

Mats and his douchebag-in-crime, Erik, had a routine. Every morning before school they met at the park. Each week, they alternated who brought the stuff. This week, it was Mats’ turn. Unfortunately, Mats had loaned his precious pipe to a good friend (for a price, of course) and he had not yet gotten it back.

“I don’t have the pipe,” Mats told Erik, sitting down on the bench. His breath made clouds in the cold morning air. He folded his arms and tapped his foot in the grass.

Erik raised an eyebrow. “Well, do you have a bowl?”

“I lost it.”

“Great.”

Mats didn’t say anything. It was a lie. He knew exactly where his bowl was, but he didn’t want to have to use it. He was picky. He hadn’t smoked from an empty water bottle in years.

He’d rather miss his morning high than have to smoke from a water bottle.

The two boys sat in silence for several minutes. Mats listened to the birds. He looked at the ugly, crumpled brown leaves collected around the roots of trees. It was too early for the trees to be losing their leaves already.

He thought of Benedikt Höwedes. Then he stopped thinking about Benedikt. He hated Benedikt.

“I want to smoke, Mats,” Erik interrupted the silence.

Erik was two years younger than Mats and very annoying.

“Shut up,” Mats said, staring straight ahead. “You’re fifteen.”

“What does that have to do with anything?” Erik retorted.

“Because you’re stupid,” Mats explained.

“Fuck you.”

Mats scratched his neck. “Get over yourself.”

Erik snorted. “Look who’s talking.”

Suddenly, Mats turned to face Erik. He looked so childish, so naive with his baby blue eyes and pouty expression. Mats pitied him, almost. Erik smoked because he needed to. Mats smoked because he wanted to.

“Hey, Erik,” Mats began thoughtfully, looking away again. “Do you ever just sit there and think… ‘What the fuck am I doing?’”

“Uh,” Erik replied. “Not really. I figure if I’m doing something, there’s probably a reason even if I don’t know what it is.”

That was when Mats realized how cold he was. He wrapped his arms around himself. “I feel like shit. I’m going home,” he said flatly.

“Bye,” said Erik. He dipped his head forward and folded his hands in his lap.

Mats stood up. He set the bowl, lighter, and weed where he had been sitting next to Erik. Then he left.

\-----

Benedikt was not in the least bit surprised when Mats Hummels did not show up to chemistry the next day. He sat in his normal seat, took out his sheet of paper, and continued drawing stars. He wasn’t in the mood to work today. He’d finish the project this weekend.

Having chemistry at the end of the day sucked.

Benedikt looked up when he heard someone sitting in the desk next to him. “What’s up, Manu?”

“Thomas went to the bathroom again… It’s his fourth time in twenty minutes,” Manuel said, sounding amused.

Benedikt bit back a laugh. “He’s probably getting off,” he mumbled.

Manuel grimaced. Either that, or Thomas couldn’t stand to be around him.

“Just talk to him, Manu. It can’t be that bad,” Benedikt said, looking intently at his friend.

“I tried. He just gets so embarrassed. You’d’ve thought it’d be the opposite, but the poor kid’s terrified of me. Honestly, I’ve never heard him talk so little. It’s kind of funny, I guess.” Manuel smiled sadly.

Benedikt leaned onto the desk and rested his head on his fist. “Everyone seems so out of character this year.”

Manuel lowered an eyebrow and gestured towards Marco and Mario, who were both bent over a single iPhone, then to Lukas and Bastian, who were currently involved in a questionable PDA session. Jerome was reading a book; Sami was eating chips. Andre was fixing his hair while Toni looked very bored, the two of them having already finished their project. The only pair actually working collectively on the project was Miroslav and Philipp.

Benedikt smiled slightly. “Well, not _everyone_. But definitely Thomas. And Mats… wasn’t really how I expected him to be.”

“Oh, yeah, what the hell happened yesterday?” Manuel asked curiously.

At that moment, Thomas decided to reenter the room. He looked around awkwardly for Manuel, then upon realizing he was occupied, he looked relieved and took his seat. And less than five seconds later, much like himself, he had begun talking animatedly to anyone who would at least pretend to be listening. Philipp glared at him in disapproval.

Benedikt felt a little bit better as soon as Philipp and Thomas got into another petty argument; things were still normal. He decided it would be okay to talk with Manuel about what was bothering him.

“I think there’s something going on with Mats,” he said, lowering his voice.

Manuel looked puzzled. “What’s that?”

“I don’t know, maybe it’s just me. But it’s like…” Benedikt tried to think of a way to explain it. He brought his hand to the back of neck and slowly massaged it. “I guess it’s kind of a shock that Mats Hummels is a real person with emotions and shit, too. I think he took it to heart what I said.”

“What did you say to him?”

But just then, Mr. Löw had finally had enough. “I hope you all have been using your time productively, because your projects are due at the end of the period.”

That was enough to shut everyone up. Both Mr. Löw and the whole class knew that the projects weren’t due until next week. But no one dared bring that up.

Benedikt shrugged and Manuel gave him an understanding look before they both put their heads down and pretended to work. Benedikt started drawing more stars. Manuel twirled his pen between his fingers.

The only sounds to be heard were the crinkling of a chip bag and the lows mutters of Thomas, who apparently was incapable of giving his voice a rest.

“Would you like to come sit with me in the front of the room, Müller?” Mr. Löw’s voice cracked the silence.

“No, sir,” Thomas quickly replied.

“Put your phone away, Reus, and do not eat in the classroom, Khedira. If you had read the lab safety packet, you would have known that bringing food around the chemistry lab is potentially hazardous. And Müller, I suggest you sit with your partner and get to work or you can sit in the hallway by yourself.”

Manuel froze. His pen slipped from his fingers and clattered onto the desk.

“Uh, okay,” Thomas said. He shifted uncomfortably across the room, chewing his lip, and ungracefully took the desk across from Manuel. All eyes in the room were trained on poor Thomas.

Benedikt gave Manuel a reassuring nod then looked at the clock. 2:19.

Mr. Löw surveyed the class for several more minutes, walking around the room and making sure everyone was working together and not texting, eating, or talking about football. When Benedikt saw Mr. Löw approaching him, he covered his stars with his forearm so only the short list he had started last night was visible.

“How’s it going, Höwedes?” Mr. Löw asked Benedikt.

“Fine,” lied Benedikt, putting on his best smile. It was useless, though. Mr. Löw had eyes like an x-ray.

“I am aware that Mr. Hummels decided not to come to school today. I’ve arranged for the two of you to meet in the library during study hall tomorrow. He will be there, I promise,” Mr. Löw said so only Benedikt could hear.

“Thank you,” said Benedikt politely, feeling relieved at being let off the hook again by the strictest teacher in the school. He half expected Mr. Löw to wink before he returned to his desk and became absorbed in his computer screen again. But he didn’t, of course.

Benedikt filled in a star. Then he folded the piece of paper in half and made a mental note to toss it in the recycling on his way out. _I don’t need this sheet of paper anymore because Mats is going to start a new one with me tomorrow,_ Benedikt thought stubbornly.

For the past twenty-four hours, he had tried so hard to hate Mats. But Benedikt found it impossible to hate Mats, for reasons he could not grasp. It was impossible not to hope for at least a little something.


	4. Conquering Feelings

Mats was slumped over on one of the couches in the library, taking up the entire piece of furniture. The glares he received from students looking for somewhere to sit did not guilt him into sitting up. He just smiled at them.

A shy looking girl, clutching her books to her chest like a lifeline, looked around the seating area. All the couches and tables were occupied. Most students were either reading or doing homework. Mats was the only one doing absolutely nothing. And he also happened to be taking up an entire couch.

The girl timidly approached Mats. She opened her mouth to speak and her face immediately turned white with fear.

“Sorry, sweetie,” Mats drawled. “No room here. Unless you wanna--”

“Fuck off, Hummels.”

Mats turned towards the voice, surprised. Of course, it was Benedikt. Mats scowled at him. “Why are you wearing a scarf?”

Benedikt sneered back. “Why do you care if I’m wearing a scarf?”

“Because you look gay.”

“Okay, Mats,” Benedikt replied wearily, rolling his eyes. He tugged off the scarf he’d picked out this morning and flung it at the girl, who dropped her armful of books trying to catch it. The poor girl stood rooted to the spot, looking like she was about to cry.

Benedikt pursed his lips and shot Mats a look of disgust before bending down to collect the girl’s books. “It’s okay,” he told her gently as he straightened up. “You’re okay.” She nodded frantically, grabbed her books from Benedikt’s arms and hurried off with his scarf.

Mats snickered.

“Shut the hell up,” Benedikt snapped. He roughly shoved Mats’ feet away and sat down heavily on the couch. Mats belched in response.

“You are _disgusting_ ,” exclaimed Benedikt, looking at Mats as if he were a piece of garbage. Which, arguably, he was.

“Yep, that’s me.” Mats grinned smugly.

Benedikt rested his elbows on his thighs and cupped his face in his hands. He already had a headache and he’d been with Mats for precisely two minutes.

“Okay, Mats, hear me out here,” Benedikt began slowly. Mats waggled his eyebrows, an action which Benedikt promptly ignored. “Whether or not you contribute to this project, I am going to make sure it is done because I care about my grade. Let’s settle this once and for all: is there _any_ chance at all you will help me at all?”

Mats appeared to consider this. He furrowed his eyebrows and stared at his feet (the ones which Benedikt had just forcefully relocated).

“Mats?” Benedikt prompted.

“Let’s get the hell out of here.”

“Pardon?”

“I said, let’s leave,” Mats clarified. He looked at Benedikt with a very un-Mats-Hummels-ish expression, one that may have actually been genuine. “I fucking hate this place.”

Benedikt bit his lip, frowning. The last thing he wanted to do was go anywhere with Mats Hummels. But curiosity outweighed his better instincts. “Alright, then.”

Mats stood, slung his backpack over one shoulder, and Benedikt followed him out of the library. Benedikt was dying to know where Mats would take him. He was also interested in what Mats kept in his backpack; certainly it wasn’t schoolwork of any sort.

Benedikt had to jog to keep up with Mats’ long legs and hurried pace. Once they were outside the school, he found himself wishing he hadn’t given his scarf away; it was really fucking cold out here. Benedikt balled up his hands and blew warm air into them.

Mats looked over his shoulder to check that Benedikt was still there. He didn’t appear cold in the slightest or uncomfortable in any way. Meanwhile, it gradually occurred to Benedikt that he had just literally ran out of school in the middle of the day.

Finally, they reached a park and Benedikt followed Mats along a unkempt dirt path. Tall, untrimmed plants left scratches on his bare arms as they pushed by. The fresh cuts made Benedikt’s skin sting and the cold air bit his nose and cheeks mercilessly. Mats appeared unfazed.

Eventually, the path smoothed out and opened into a small grassy area embellished with a single bench and a scattering of naked trees. Mats took a seat on the bench, setting his backpack on the ground in front of him. Benedikt followed suit, sitting as far away from Mats on the bench as possible.

“Do you want to smoke?” Mats asked, digging through his backpack.

Benedikt’s heart leapt. “No,” he answered, trying to hide how much his teeth were chattering. He ran his hands up and down his numb, stinging arms.

Mats emerged from his backpack having obtained everything he needed. He dumped it all on the bench between himself and Benedikt.

“Are you sure?”

“Don’t tell me you dragged me all the way here just so you could get high,” Benedikt said stiffly.

“You followed me here,” Mats said simply. He switched his lighter on and began burning a small hole in an empty water bottle. “It was your choice. Don’t blame me.”

“Fuck you. Actually, fuck you, Mats Hummels.” Benedikt could no longer disguise the fact that he was shaking from the cold. Lucky for him, Mats ignored his discomfort.

“This is so ratchet,” Mats muttered to himself. He tested the hole in the bottle to make sure the bowl fit snugly. Then he paused and looked up at Benedikt, his eyes dark and his jaw set firm. “Come on, Benni. I promise nothing bad will happen. You’ll be fine.”

Benedikt frowned. “What did you just call me?”

It may have just been his imagination, but Benedikt could’ve sworn he saw a hint of pink appear in Mats’ cheeks.

“Nothing,” Mats mumbled, returning to his task. He used his fingers to grind the plant into small bits, then gently brushed them off into the bowl.

Benedikt watched as Mats brought the bottle to his lips and lit the bowl. The bottle filled with smoke and Mats breathed in slowly, his eyelids fluttering shut. He exhaled, blowing smoke into the air, then returned to the bottle for more.

But before Mats lit the bowl again, he turned to Benedikt and smiled slightly. “You sure you don’t want to try? It might help loosen the stick up your ass.”

Benedikt didn’t even get defensive. “I don’t want to.”

Mats shrugged. “Alrighty, then.” Then he brought the bottle to his lips again and lit the bowl. Once again, the bottle filled with smoke. But before Mats had a chance to inhale, he found the bottle being snatched out of his hands.

“What the--”

Benedikt didn’t know what the hell he was doing. Without thinking, his placed his cold lips in the same spot Mats’ lips had been and breathed in the foul-tasting smoke, swallowing as soon as his lungs were full.

And then he was coughing, hard. He coughed until his eyes were watering and spilling over onto his cheeks. Then he swallowed thickly and squeezed his eyes shut.

“Are... are you okay?” Mats asked. The phrase sounded foreign coming from his mouth. His eyes flitted back and forth between Benedikt and the plastic bottle which was now on the ground.

Benedikt shook his head.

Mats almost wanted to ask him what was wrong. But he decided against it. That was taking things too far. Plus, he didn’t know how to ask it, anyway.

“Why don’t you ever do any work? What the fuck is wrong with you?” Benedikt said angrily. He looked at Mats, hurt clear in his expression, his nose pink from the cold. “ _What_ is so hard about this fucking project?!”

“I don’t know anything, Benedikt! If you haven’t noticed, I’m the dumbest piece of shit in this whole school!” Mats responded just as angrily as Benedikt.

Benedikt threw his hand up front of it. “It’s _common sense,_ Mats! That’s all this project is! Common sense! Don’t drink any chemicals. Don’t set the lab on fire. Whatever. It’s _easy_. You’re just making this harder for everyone and yourself by being a bitch!”

“I don’t have any common sense!” shot Mats, stamping his foot like a child would.

“What,” Benedikt said, narrowing his eyes, “are you _talking_ about? Of course you do, you just _choose_ to a dumbass. It’s your choice.”

“I can’t help it,” Mats moaned. He shook his head, then covered his face with his hands.

“Oh, give me a break,” Benedikt said icily, rolling his eyes. He was cold, hungry, and sick of Mats’ drama. He was questioning why he even followed Mats here in the first place. What was he thinking? And why was he still here? The ideal thing to do right now would be to get up and leave.

But Benedikt stayed.

Mats pressed his thumbs against his eyes until they started aching. Then he let his hands down and glanced over at the boy next to him. For the first time, he actually saw Benedikt. He saw how Benedikt looked disappointed and pissed at the same time, how he was shaking ever so slightly from the cold, and the thin lines of blood on his arms from the unkempt path.

“Uh...I have an extra jacket in my bag if you want to borrow it,” Mats muttered, dropping his gaze from Benedikt as he spoke.

“No, thank you,” replied Benedikt coldly. “I thought you hated me?”

“I do hate you,” agreed Mats casually. “You’re lame and annoying.”

“I hate you too,” Benedikt said.

There was silence between the two boys. Noises from the woods filled the air. Mats glanced up at the cold gray sheet of sky. It was probably going to rain again. Sure enough, he felt a raindrop land on his cheek and instinctively reached to wipe it off.

“I changed my mind,” Benedikt said suddenly. “I don’t hate you, Mats Hummels. I just think you’re a horrible person.”

“Okay. Still doesn’t change the fact that I hate you,” Mats answered.

Benedikt sniffled. The cold was making his nose run, and of course he didn’t have any tissues. “Give me your extra jacket.”

Mats did as he was told and handed his jacket to Benedikt, who promptly wiped his nose with the soft material. Then he handed it back to Mats.

“Don’t you want to put it on? You look cold.”

“I am cold, but I will not wear your jacket,” Benedikt said firmly.

“Why not?” Mats wanted to know.

“Really, Mats? You’ve been nothing but a complete jerk and now you expect me to want to wear your clothes?” Benedikt said incredulously. He shook his head in disbelief.

“How can you call me a jerk when I was just trying to help you?” Mats asked. More raindrops.

“ _Time_ , Mats. It takes _time_ to build up someone’s trust,” explained Benedikt in exasperation. It took both him and Mats precisely half a second to realize what he had just implied.

That Mats was trying to gain Benedikt’s trust and Benedikt was willing to trust him given time.

Mats could have carried on the conversation. Here was someone willing to listen to what he had to say, to give him a chance to prove himself. Here was someone who didn’t simply scoff at him and walk away. Benedikt wanted to help Mats, even if he didn’t realize that that was what he was doing. Benedikt _wanted_ Mats to be a better person.

But that was too hard a thing to do. So instead, Mats said, “It’s raining. Let’s get out of here.”

Benedikt just nodded. Then, he snatched Mats’ extra jacket from his arms and quickly put it on, blushing furiously, as if the faster he put it on the less likely Mats was to notice. “Just so my arms don’t get all scratched up again,” he mumbled.

Then they stood up, Mats grabbing his backpack and the bottle they had used. They began their trek through the unkempt path and out of the park, this time side-by-side. By the time they reached the road again, it was pouring.

Benedikt was glad because the rain would wash the blood from his arms. He rolled up his sleeves.


	5. Shelter from the Storm

Once they reached the parking lot of the school, they were drenched through to the bone. Mats pulled out a set of keys from his pocket and unlocked the doors to a pick-up truck that may as well have had the words 'I am a douchebag' spray painted across the sides because holy shit this was the most douchey looking vehicle Benedikt had ever seen in his life.

Mats pulled open the passenger door. Benedikt was surprised when he didn’t climb in; instead; he walked around to the other side and got in the driver’s seat. _Oh, he opened the door for me._

Benedikt felt his face burning past the icy rain as he stumbled into Mats’ truck. By the time he was in, Mats had already turned on the heat, the sound of the rain muffled now that they were inside the truck and that’s when the full realization of what he had just done hit Benedikt. Running away from school with Mats Hummels in the middle of the day. And now he was sitting in his truck.

Not surprisingly, Mats’ truck was a mess. There was only the driver’s and passenger’s seats -- the rear window looked over the bed of the truck -- but in that small space there were so many empty soda bottles and McDonald’s wrappers that Mats could have opened his own portable fast food chain. It smelled like a combination of french fries and weed. Not bad, but not really endearing either.

“My backpack’s still in my locker,” Benedikt mumbled, looking down at his lap as he fiddled with his fingers and shivered. The jacket he had borrowed from Mats was soaked through with rain and not doing much to help. He glanced over at Mats, whose thick dark hair was plastered to his forehead, raindrops falling off the tip of his nose and that sight alone was enough to make Benedikt swell with an embarrassing warmth.

Benedikt had to remind himself that this was _Mats Hummels_ whom he was thinking of this way. _Mats Hummels_ whom he maybe possibly thought was sort of attractive.

 _Please, no_ , Benedikt thought desperately. But it was already too late. Everything made sense now, it was obvious why Benedikt hadn’t just finished the whole fucking project by himself the first day it was assigned and avoided all the drama.

Benedikt had a crush on Mats Hummels.

Mats licked his lips. Benedikt gulped; he’d almost forgotten that he’d spoken until Mats answered.

“I think you should wait till the rain stops, Benni,” he said calmly. Benedikt’s stomach twisted at that nickname again.

“Don’t call me ‘Benni’,” he ordered. If he were to be honest with himself, he liked it but he could _not_ allow himself to get tied up with Mats Hummels in any way.

Mats looked hurt. “Why can’t I? It’s easier to say than ‘Benedikt’.”

“Because… I don’t know. Let’s just get back to class. You already missed school yesterday, you don’t want to get in trouble do you?”

“I really don’t give a shit,” said Mats glumly.

The tone of his voice stung Benedikt. “Why are you so horrible to yourself?” He looked at Mats but couldn’t see anything past his dark eyes. Mats was shutting down.

“Ten minutes ago you were saying I was a horrible person. Which one is it?”

“You’re a horrible person because you’re horrible to yourself,” Benedikt said. He pinched his upper lip, debating whether or not to continue and tell Mats everything that was wrong with him. He figured Mats already knew but when would he ever admit it?

But before Benedikt could think anymore, he felt a cold hand around his wrist and pulling his own hand away from his mouth. Slowly, he turned and looked at Mats shyly. And then Mats dropped his hand as suddenly as he’d taken hold of it.

“You should take off that jacket. You’ll get sick if you keep it on too long,” Mats said, quietly, unblinking.

Benedikt scowled.

“I’m sorry for making fun of your scarf,” Mats added.

Benedikt folded his arms. He didn’t want to do anything Mats Hummels told him to do. He hated Mats Hummels. He hated Mats Hummels for being so gorgeous yet so unfixable. “No.”

Mats shrugged. “Your problem if you get sick.”

“I’m going back to class. If you decide to help me with the project let me know, otherwise don’t talk to me ever again. Bye,” said Benedikt harshly. Then he pushed open the door, slipped out, slammed the door as hard as he could and marched straight through the rain back to the school.

He half expected Mats to follow, he _wanted_ Mats to follow. But there was no dark-haired boy chasing after him to be seen.

\-----

It was still raining when Benedikt walked into 7th period chemistry, though he had been indoors for several hours now and had dried off.

Mats’ jacket was crumpled up at the bottom of his backpack. He'd shoved it down there before entering the cafeteria for lunch.

Today, Benedikt roamed past his normal desk next to Manuel and slid into the desk next to where Mats usually sat (when he actually showed up to class, which isn’t something you’d want to hold your breath over). Manuel shot him a questioning look. Benedikt responded with a face that he hoped expressed that he would explain later.

Mr. Löw turned on the projector. He explained that today, they would be watching a movie on the molecular structure of the universe and to please answers all the questions on the sheet he was about to hand out because yes, they would be graded on it.

He also pointed out that no, these were not questions that they could just look up on their phones under their desks while the movie was playing because they required _thought_.

Benedikt scratched his neck.

Just as Mr. Löw was starting the movie, someone laughed very loudly.

Mr. Löw paused and directed his attention to the left side of the room. “Müller, would you care to tell me what you find so humorous?”

This prompted Thomas to just laugh some more, so Lukas helped him out. “Nothing, sir. Sorry.”

Mr. Löw raised an eyebrow. “Then kindly explain why you are laughing. I want to laugh, too.”

The class snickered. The image of a laughing Mr. Löw was simply infeasible. However, the image of the teacher with steam coming out of his ears and tightly clenched lips was slightly more realistic as that was what the class was currently witnessing.

Finally, Manuel rolled his eyes and said, “Sir, Mats Hummels is locked outside the classroom and...and...yeah…” he finished lamely, figuring that Mr. Löw could see the details for himself.

Benedikt’s eyes grew wide and he glanced towards the door. Sure enough, there stood Mats Hummels through the window, flipping off the entire class and looking very pleased with himself.

“Open the door for him, Draxler,” Mr. Löw growled. Julian nearly tripped over his own feet crossing over to the door, he was so nervous. Benedikt could see a bead of sweat trickling down his forehead. Poor kid.

Mats entered the room dramatically, breathing heavily as if he’d just run a marathon and making as much noise as possible as he weaved his way through desks to the back of the room. He grinned wickedly at everyone who dared look at him. Thomas found this particularly hilarious, as his laughter now resembled the cries of a dying hyena. Benedikt had difficulty not cracking up over the sound of Thomas’ laughter alone, let alone Mats’ triumphant entrance.

“Get out, Müller,” Mr. Löw demanded, pointing towards the door that Mats had just paraded through. “Come back when you’ve gained some self control.”

“O-okay, sir,” Thomas choked, stumbling through the door clutching his stomach while Mats collapsed theatrically into the desk next to Benedikt.

“Hey,” he muttered.

“Hi,” Benedikt mumbled back, his heart beating a little faster.

Following Thomas’ departure, only the occasional giggle or snort interrupted the silence, but one glare from Mr. Löw was sufficient to kill the fun. “Klose, please assist me in handing out the movie sheets,” he said. Miroslav rose elegantly from his desk and strode down the aisles, slipping a very intimidating-looking worksheet on each student’s desk. Even Miroslav Klose, notorious for his inability to take a joke, looked slightly frazzled.

Then Mr. Löw turned off the lights and the movie began.

It was a decently interesting movie, Benedikt had to admit. Most of the class was paying attention, or at least pretending to. Benedikt scribbled down answers to the questions. Every so often, he turned his head to check on Mats.

Mats’ chin was perched atop his hands folded across the worksheet on his desk. Admittedly, he looked beautiful like this, with his hair slightly astray from the rain and the light from the screen reflecting off his dark eyes. He was not asleep and could even pass for paying attention, but Benedikt could tell from his empty expression that he was completely zoned out.

“Hey,” he whispered, tugging the worksheet out from under Mats’ chin. “Answer the questions.”

Mats shook his head.

Benedikt hesitated. “I’ll help you.” He nudged Mats’ shoulders. “Come on. It’s not that hard.”

Mats shook his head again, more viciously. Then he pulled up his hood and tried to go to sleep.

Benedikt wasn’t having any of that. He ripped Mats’ hood back off. “Sit up,” he hissed.

Mats elbowed Benedikt, tugged his hood back over his head, and readjusted himself.

Biting back a sigh, Benedikt pulled a blank sheet of lined paper from his folder and wrote, _Why?_ He shoved the paper under Mats’ nose then tried to refocus on the movie, trying to kill any hopes he had of Mats writing a note back.

Seconds later, he felt the paper being pushed back onto his own desk.

 _I like being horrible,_ Mats had written in a lazy scrawl.

_Really? Do you really?_

_Yes. It’s easier to fail on purpose than on accident._

Upon receiving this message, Benedikt crumpled up the paper as if to say ‘Okay, Mats. Do whatever you want. I don’t care. It’s your choice.’

Mats watched him do this with an unreadable expression. Then he pulled his movie sheet in front of him and started writing something.

Benedikt expected him to hand over the sheet and read some pissy note about how Benedikt thought he was so much better than everyone else because he did his work and tried hard in school and blah blah blah and to just fuck off. But minutes later and Benedikt still hadn't received _any_ note. What sort of confessional novel was Mats writing that was taking him so long? Out of curiosity, Benedikt leaned over slightly to read what Mats had written on his sheet.

_A covalent bond between two atoms happens when they share electrons because their electron shells are not full so they share them so they can become full and that makes the atoms stick together._

Benedikt smiled at Mats. Mats smiled proudly back.

Mats Hummels was doing his work. 

Benedikt’s grin widened. He reached over and placed his hand over Mats’ before he could stop himself. Mats flipped his hand over and slipped his fingers in between Benedikt’s. Benedikt could feel the warmth spreading from his fingertips, shooting up his arm and sending sparks dancing around in his brain. He squeezed Mats’ hand and pulled it so their arms fell between their two desks.

For the rest of the class period, the only time they let go of each other was to write down answers.


	6. Ice Cream

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Benedikt finds something out.

The moment the movie finished, Benedikt wrenched his hand from Mats and wiped his palm off on his jeans. Mats was a sweater, apparently. Something which Benedikt tried to ignore how appealing he found it to be.

Sometime in the middle of the movie, Thomas Müller had snuck his way back into the room. He was now chatting away with Bastian about something or another or most likely nothing.

Mr. Löw crossed the room to turn the lights on again. Benedikt squinted. Mats shielded his eyes by effectively collapsing onto his desk.

“Please leave your sheets on my desk before you leave. The bell should be ringing in about two minutes,” Mr. Löw instructed, sternly. “Hummels and Höwedes, I’d like to see you two.”

Benedikt tried to exchange a puzzled look with Mats. It didn’t really work though because Mats had resumed his usual position of using his desk as a pillow. Benedikt sighed and a slight shiver ran through him.

He leaned down and dug out Mats’ jacket from his backpack. It was still damp. Benedikt put it on anyway, blushing as he did so. It didn’t matter though; Mats wasn’t even looking. Though Mats had only about an inch on Benedikt, height-wise, Benedikt was skinnier and the jacket hung loose around his chest.

Finally, the bell rang and there was a scramble to slip papers on the teacher’s desk then get the hell out of the room. Benedikt and Mats (who apparently had still been listening despite not appearing to be) stayed put. When everyone had gone, Benedikt stood and approached Mr. Löw at his desk, Mats shuffling along behind him.

Benedikt gulped. He added his paper to the pile that had already accumulated on Mr. Löw’s desk. He noticed that Mats didn’t do the same, but now was no time to be nudging him.

“Have a seat, gentlemen,” Mr. Löw said, gesturing to the two student desks closest to his own that, coincidentally, no one sat at during class. After Mats and Benedikt had sat down, Mr. Löw opened his mouth to say something but Benedikt interrupted.

“Mats answered all the questions about the movie,” he blurted out. “He just didn’t turn them in.” He could feel Mats’ eyes on him, but he didn’t avert his own eyes. He was angry at Mats. Why wouldn’t Mats turn in his completed worksheet?

“No, I didn’t,” Mats snapped. “He’s lying.”

Mr. Löw raised an eyebrow, looking curiously between his two students.

“He did it! I saw him doing it! I _know_ he answered those questions!” Benedikt returned, almost desperately. _What are you doing, Mats Hummels?_

“I didn’t fucking do the worksheet,” Mats stated, a pleased look on his face. Then, to prove it, he pulled said worksheet out of his backpack and showed it to Mr. Löw, who nodded and ignored Mats’ colorful language.

“Let me see it,” Benedikt said rudely. He snatched the paper from Mats and studied it, a look of horror crossing his face as he did.

Yes, Mats had answered the first question that Benedikt had seen earlier, prompting him to smile at Mats and take his hand. The rest of the questions, however, had words written beneath them, but none of those words consisted of _atom_ or _van der Waals interactions_ or _electron shell_.

The words Mats had written instead were more along the lines of _I_ and _hate_ and _Benni_.

Benedikt wanted to cry. He was afraid he would, in front of both Mr. Löw and Mats Hummels. So in a moment of shock, he raced out of the room, biting hard on his upper lip, Mats’ paper clenched tightly between two fingers. He didn’t even bother to slam the door behind him and the sounds of slamming lockers and loud voices coming from the crowded hallway spilled into the nearly empty classroom.

Mats’ eyes had followed Benedikt on his way out then slowly returned to Mr. Löw’s harsh gaze and stony eyes. Mats didn’t blink. He kept his face as blank as a canvas.

“You are dismissed, Hummels. I wished to speak with you and Mr. Höwedes both regarding the progress of your project.” Mr. Löw’s jaw tightened. “It seems that’s not an option anymore. You may go.”

Mats nodded then stood up, slowly gathering his belongings and putting his backpack over one shoulder. He didn’t look back as he made his way towards the door.

“One more thing, Hummels.”

“Yeah,” Mats grunted, pausing but not turning around.

“Please,” Mr. Löw began, his voice softening in tone, “go and find Mr. Höwedes. I think he’d appreciate an explanation.”

“If I feel like it,” Mats responded smoothly. Then he hitched his backpack up, which was sliding off his shoulder, and strolled through the door into the hallway.

\-----

Benedikt was relieved when he didn’t end up crying. He never would’ve been able to forgive himself for that.

He threw Mats' paper away in the first trashcan he saw. It stung, but it felt good. Empowering.

He really didn’t care that Mats had written ‘I hate Benni’ underneath every single question. That, he didn’t care about. It wasn’t news; he already knew that Mats hated him.

What he did care about was the fact that Mats had blatantly tricked him into thinking he was doing the work, that Mats had let Benni feel proud and let him run his fingers across Mats’ smooth skin while he fell for another one of his asshole traps. That was what Benni cared about. That Mats had humiliated him.

He felt like a complete idiot. Why couldn’t he have a crush on someone _normal?_

He decided right then and there that he was never going to talk to Mats Hummels again.

Good thing it was Thursday. Only one more day of school then he wouldn’t have to deal with Mats Hummels for two full days. Two full days of peace.

\-----

_To: Erik, Marco, Mario_

_Come over_

Mats sent the text as he sat in his truck at a stop light. He heard someone blaring their horn behind him because the light had turned green. He lifted his middle finger then waited a few more seconds just for the hell of it before slamming on the gas. The sky was still thick and gray from the rain, cars sending water splashing up from puddles in the road as they rushed by.

He heard his phone vibrate from where he’d tossed it on the passenger seat. He reached over to grab it, his fingers brushing over the cloth of the seat and he tried to ignore how the seat was still damp because Benedikt had been sitting there just hours ago and got it wet.

From the rain.

Mats’ jeans tightened.

Why couldn’t he have just been nice to Benedikt? Or at least been honest, for god’s sake.

Because Mats Hummels wasn’t supposed to be nice and honest, that’s why.

He was only supposed to be honest if what he were saying _wasn’t_ nice, that’s why.

_From: Erik_

_Coming_

Erik was so damn thirsty.

A few minutes later, Mats got a text from Marco saying that he and Mario were on their way. Mats smiled. Anything he asked for, he got. If Mats Hummels wanted company, he got it. If Mats Hummels wanted more drugs, he got them. If Mats Hummels wanted Benedikt Höwedes, then he was going to get Benedikt Höwedes.

He ignored the nagging in the back of his mind telling him that _something_ was going to have to change if he wanted Benni. Mats didn’t want to have to change. It was too hard. Mats didn’t want to have to break all the habits he’d formed. That would be too hard.

 _Life is too hard,_ Mats thought miserably as he pulled into the McDonald’s and got in line for the drive-thru.

“Twenty piece McNuggets, two Big Macs, three large fries, four large cokes, and an ice cream sundae,” Mats told the employee into the speaker when it was his turn. Then, remembering a word Benni had used a few times, he tagged it on at the end of his order. “Please.”

The word tasted like vomit. Mats made a face.

After confirming his order (he had only asked for two Big Macs because Marco and Mario didn’t like them), Mats paid through the window and picked up the food at the next one. He checked to make sure everything was there. It was. Then he checked to make sure he’d gotten the right amount of change. He hadn’t. They’d given him a ten instead of a five.

Mats stared at the bill. Then he shrugged and drove off, wondering if Benni liked McDonald’s. He probably didn’t, the fucking prick. Maybe Benni was more of Taco Bell kind of guy.

Mats shoveled the sundae into his mouth with the bowl sat in his lap, his other hand on the steering wheel.

Benni still had his jacket, didn’t he? Mats made a mental note to get it back as soon as possible. He didn’t want Benni to have his jacket.

Benni was so cute, with his freckles and crooked teeth and dimples and determination to do well in school and those stupid crinkles next to his eyes when he smiled at Mats. _I’m so ugly,_ thought Mats pitifully. He looked at himself in the rearview mirror.

He wasn't actually ugly, he decided. Mats liked how he looked. He could use a good haircut if anything.

When he pulled up in front of his house, his friends were all waiting on his porch. He laughed. _Bastards._

He emerged from his truck, phone and McDonald’s bag in one hand and tray of Coke in the other (he left his backpack in the car; he never brought it inside because why would he need to?).

“Let’s go get fucking high,” Mats said sourly, ignoring his friends’ greetings and setting down the tray to unlock the front door to his house. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he could see a blond boy with freckles and a scowl rolling his eyes at Mats’ suggestion.

But by that evening, Mats was so fucked up on alcohol and weed that he couldn’t imagine ever caring about Benni again.

\-----

On his way home from school, Benedikt stopped by the drugstore to pick up a poster board. Manuel, out of guilt that his best friend had gotten stuck with such a lousy partner, offered to pay for it. Benedikt shook his head. He hadn’t said much since he and Manuel had started walking home together, even when Manuel asked what Mr. Löw had said to him and Mats.

“Are you sure nothing happened?” Manuel asked for the third time as he and Benedikt emerged from the store into the shopping center.

“Yes,” Benedikt said firmly. “Nothing happened. Stop asking me.”

“You can tell me anything, you know,” Manuel reminded him.

“Manu, just _stop_. I don’t want to talk about it. Please respect that.” Benedikt took a deep breath, taking in the hurt expression on his friend’s face. “I’m sorry, I just… I don’t want to talk about it. It doesn’t matter, anyway.”

“Of course it matters,” Manuel said. “If you’re this bothered by whatever happened--”

“What makes you think I’m bothered?” Benedikt interrupted.

“You’re acting like you are,” Manuel pointed out, sticking his hands in his pockets.

Benedikt muttered something that Manuel couldn’t hear. Manuel bit his lip. He hated seeing his friend like this; it simply wasn’t like Benedikt.

“Do you want to get ice cream? It could be on me,” Manuel suggested, slightly apprehensive. He stopped in front of the ice cream parlor.

“Sure,” Benedikt replied matter-of-factly, perking up a little. There was nothing a little ice cream couldn’t fix.

Benedikt ordered the most expensive sundae on the menu and found it impossible not to laugh a little bit at the look on Manuel’s face.

“Really, Benni? Really?” Manuel huffed, rolling his eyes as he forked over a twenty to the cashier. Benedikt knew he was joking though; he wouldn’t have ordered the sundae if he hadn’t known that Manuel didn’t care.

They sat down at a high table, their chairs scraping against the floor and a top 40 tune filling the the small parlor with sound. Manuel was looking at Benedikt curiously, so Benedikt said, “What is it?”

“Uh… what are you wearing?” inquired Manuel awkwardly.

Benedikt looked down at himself. Mats Hummels’ jacket. He felt the blush creeping up on his cheeks as he quickly tore it off and shoved it in his backpack. “Nothing.”

Manuel still looked suspicious, but he shrugged and decided to drop the matter. Benedikt clearly was not in the mood for discussing anything today.

They were the only ones in the parlor (ice cream evidently wasn’t a very popular dining option on cold, rainy days) until little Julian Draxler pushed the door open and stepped in, looking as shy and lost as he did during class.

“Hey, Julian,” Benedikt said, smiling at him.

“Hi,” Julian squeaked as he scurried across the parlor to order his ice cream.

Manuel and Benedikt exchanged a look while Julian was ordering. Julian’s shyness was well-known, and though he was often invited to join people’s groups or sit with them at lunch, he always declined, shaking his head and blushing heavily. If Manuel and Benedikt invited him to sit with them, he might pass out.

But before they could reach a mutual decision through eye contact, Benedikt heard Julian stammering over his words at the cash register.

“I’m sorry-- I don’t-- I don’t have--”

Benedikt frowned, slipping from his chair and digging through his pocket for money. He approached the cashier and set a five on the counter. “Here,” he said, pushing it towards her. “I’ve got it.”

The girl looked surprised, but took Benedikt’s money and finished the exchange.

Julian’s face resembled a ripe tomato at this point. He stood there, feet frozen to the ground, not taking his ice cream cone that was now properly paid for. “No, you didn’t have to…” he mumbled incoherently.

Benedikt shushed him, picking up his cone for him and placing a hand on his back, and guided him towards the table where Manuel sat. “You’re sitting with us. No choice, kid,” he said cheerfully.

Julian looked positively terrified. Benedikt smiled reassuringly at him, which worked enough to get Julian to scramble into a chair. Benedikt followed and handed Julian his ice cream. Julian tentatively licked at it as he avoided looking anyone in the eye, his pupils skirting all over the place.

“We’re not going to bite you, Jule, it’s okay,” offered Manuel, taking another spoonful of his Nutella-infused ice cream.

At this remark, Julian nearly choked on his double-chocolate brownie ice cream. “That was so embarrassing!” He managed to sputter out. “I thought I had enough money and I don’t know how I forgot I already gave it to Mats and--”

“Whoa, calm down,” Manuel chuckled. “It’s okay, it happens to all of us.”

“Hold on,” Benedikt said, looking very disturbed and holding his hand in front of him. “Let me get this straight. You _gave_ your money to Mats Hummels?”

Julian clamped a hand over his mouth. That had been an accidental slip, apparently. He shook his head vigorously.

Benedikt grabbed Julian’s forearm, tugging his hand away from his mouth. “Why’d you give your money to Mats Hummels, Julian?” he pressed, concern edging its way into his voice. What reason would little Julian Draxler have to give Mats Hummels money? Since when did they even interact with each other? The only explanation Benedikt could think of was that Julian was buying drugs from Mats.

Julian cringed. “I can’t say.”

“You can tell us, Jule. We all know Mats is a dick. What happened?” Manuel urged.

Poor Julian looked like he wanted to disappear into thin air. He opened his mouth, shut it, then opened it again, trying to decide whether he could trust these two. After surveying both of their worried faces and reminding himself that Benedikt just paid for his ice cream, he sighed, ran his fingers through his hair, and decided to tell them.

“Okay,” Julian began shakily. “Mats is my neighbor. Ever since I moved next door to him two years ago, he’s been threatening to tell everyone I’m gay if I don’t give him money whenever he asks for it.”

Benedikt and Manuel started talking at the same time, both looking outraged. Julian could not make out anything they were saying as they tried to talk over each other.

“Stop,” he begged, covering his face with one hand, the other one loosely holding his ice cream cone, which was beginning to melt and dripping down the cone onto his hand.

Manuel shut his mouth and Benedikt swallowed thickly, feeling his chest tighten at the sight of Julian beside him, clearly in pain and embarrassed and confused. Their cups of ice cream sat forgotten in front of them.

Benedikt was the first to speak again, but quietly this time, gently. “You did the right thing by telling us, Julian. What Mats has been doing to you is… I don’t even know. I knew he had problems, but I never would’ve guessed they were that bad.” A queasy wave passed through him. He chose not to make a deal about Julian’s confession that he was gay. After all, Benedikt himself was bisexual, and Manuel had done his fair share of stupid things, Thomas Müller being involved in most of them. “I’m so sorry.”

Two years. Julian had been giving Mats money whenever he demanded it for the past two years. Benedikt didn’t even want to calculate how much that amounted to. And what was Mats doing with Julian’s money? Buying drugs.

The _nerve_. Benedikt clenched his fist underneath the table. He was angry at Mats, and he felt terrible for Julian. But none of that could match the shame he had for having a crush on this monster. He felt himself growing uncomfortably warm in his anger, his head swam, and he was worried that he may be the one to pass out here and not Julian.

“Let’s go,” Manuel suggested quietly, taking in Benedikt’s pale green complexion and Julian’s wide, terrified eyes. “We’ll walk you home, Jule. We need to talk to your parents.”

“Please don’t,” Julian squeaked. “They don’t know.”

“That’s why we need to tell them. It’ll be okay, I promise. We’ll be with you,” Manuel assured. And with that, he collected everyone’s half-eaten ice cream and tossed it in the garbage. He pulled Julian down from his chair and wrapped an arm around, guiding him out the door while Benedikt followed a few paces behind, his head spinning wildly.

As the rush of cold air raised goosebumps across his bare arms, he could only think of one thing, and that was that they were literally going to be right next door to Mats Hummels.


	7. Julian Draxler

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Manuel and Benedikt go to Julian's house.

The more Benedikt thought about it, the more he realized how fucked up Mats Hummels really was. The incident with the movie worksheet no longer seemed simply immature anymore. Who would do something like that, and why? It wasn’t normal. It was weird. Mats had a problem that went further than being a bad boy.

And now the money. Mats had been blackmailing Julian for the past two years. Not only did this show Mats’ true colors, but Benedikt was pretty sure it wasn’t even legal. Mats was going to get in serious trouble.

“Jule,” Benedikt said as he, Manuel, and Julian entered Julian’s (and Mats’) neighborhood, a wealthy part of town. He’d been through this neighborhood before, but he’d never visited anyone who lived here. “Exactly how much money has Mats taken from you?”

“He doesn’t ask very often. But when he does, it varies. I gave him around fifty bucks this weekend. It’s been worse, though,” Julian replied casually, as if he were discussing the weather. Since confessing to Manuel and Benedikt, his nerves had diminished significantly and he seemed happy to have someone to talk to.

“That’s so fucked up,” Manuel said emphatically. “Hummels is fucked in the head.”

Benedikt felt a pang and sucked in a breath at this remark, but no one seemed to notice and Manuel continued. “Why didn’t you ever just refuse? Why didn’t you tell anyone?”

It was a fair question -- for someone who had never experienced the wrath of Mats Hummels. Benedikt himself was falling in Mats' trap and though he didn’t want to, he couldn’t help it.

“He threatened me,” Julian repeated. “He scared me. I don’t know, it’s just… whatever Mats wants you to do, you feel as if you have to do it.”

 _Exactly,_ thought Benedikt.

But Mats wasn’t forcing Benedikt to have a crush on him, was he? That was Benedikt’s own doing. And Mats wasn’t forcing Benedikt to help him. Benedikt _wanted_ to help him. Benedikt was aware that he probably had unrealistic expectations, and he felt ridiculous even thinking about it… but he wanted to see Mats be brave. He wanted to know if there indeed was something in Mats besides a selfish dick.

There had to be. There just had to be, because no one is born a monster. Monsters are created.

“My house is right around the corner here,” Julian told them, motioning vaguely to the right as they reached the end of a uphill block. This neighborhood was nice, the houses were modern-looking and well kept and there were enough trees and parks here for the entire town, but it was also hellishly hilly. It must’ve been a nightmare here when there was a snowstorm.

They rounded the corner and were on the street that held Julian’s and Mats’ houses.

“We should talk to Mats first,” said Benedikt suddenly. He felt his heart beating faster and faster the closer they got to Julian’s.

Manuel turned to Benedikt with an ‘are you crazy?’ expression on his face. “And why should we do that?”

“Because…” Benedikt began, his throat suddenly feeling very tangled up. “This is sort of a big deal. Mats could get in a lot of trouble. I think it would only be fair if we talked to him about it first.”

_”You don’t want to get in trouble do you?” Benedikt had asked Mats earlier that day._

_“I really don’t give a shit,” Mats had responded glumly._

Manuel snorted. “ _Fair?_ He _should_ be getting in trouble, Benni. He had his chance to be fair and he blew it.”

Julian seemed nervous again, eyes flitting between Benedikt and Manuel as they debated over what to do. He noticed that the two spent a lot more time disagreeing with each other than anything else.

“Please, Manu, just let me talk to him first. I promise, you can tell whoever you want afterwards, but I think Mats deserves a chance to fix this himself before it’s too late,” Benedikt pleaded.

“Mats doesn’t deserve anything,” Manuel countered. “Whose side are you on here, anyway?”

“There are no ‘sides’. I’m just trying to do the right thing,” said Benedikt quietly. “You don’t know him.”

“And I’m glad that I don’t,” snapped Manuel.

Benedikt sighed. He hated arguing with his best friend, but Manu just didn’t understand. He rubbed his neck in frustration, wishing Manuel would get it. Get that Mats was never going to change if he never had the opportunity to.

Julian stopped in front of a long, twisting set of stone steps that led up to a large, modern house. The house was set back far and high on a spacious front lawn, lamps lining the path up to the front door. Manuel and Benedikt stopped behind Julian, and Benedikt eyed the two similar-looking houses on either side of Julian’s. One of those houses must be Mats’. He didn’t know which one it was because he didn’t see the truck parked in front of either one of them.

He was surprised. He expected Mats’ house to appear more like the inside of his truck.

“Well, this is my house,” Julian stated awkwardly. “But I agree with Benni. I think someone should talk to Mats first.”

A wave of relief crashed through Benedikt. Manuel just shrugged.

“I’ll wait here,” he said, leaning against the first lamppost. “It’s probably best if I don’t go. I’ll leave it to you two.”

“We can’t go now, anyway. He’s not home,” Benedikt pointed out.

“How do you know?” Manuel asked, surprised.

“His truck’s not here,” Benedikt explained.

Manuel raised an eyebrow. “And how do you know what his truck looks like?”

“I was in it,” Benedikt told him. He was getting slightly irritated. Why couldn’t Manuel just trust him? “And before you ask why: it was because I ditched class today with him and when it started raining he took me to his truck. Any more questions?” He looked at Manuel expectantly.

There was a pregnant silence, in which the only sounds to be heard were some people getting in their car a few houses down and the song of a lone bird in the sad, gray sky.

Benedikt slumped down onto the first step, burying his face in his palms. It was only a few seconds before he felt Manuel sitting next to him and a familiar arm around his back. Julian stepped back, mumbling something about how they were welcome to come inside when they were ready and he would make them something to eat. Benedikt liked Julian very much but was grateful that he was giving them privacy.

“Benni,” Manuel said quietly.

Benedikt grumbled something into his hands. He was glad Manuel was conceding, but he was stubborn. Once he was in a bad mood, he preferred to stay that way.

“I...I’m sorry,” said Manuel earnestly.

Benedikt lifted his head and let his hands fall. He looked straight ahead across the street at all the rich-ass houses and their fancy-ass lawns. “Me too.”

“I don’t mean to fight with you. It’s just… this is Mats Hummels we’re talking about and I’m worried about you. What have you been doing with him?”

“Trying to get him to do the chemistry project with me,” Benedikt answered tiredly. It was partly the truth, at least.

“I wouldn’t get my hopes up,” said Manuel softly.

Another moment of silence passed where Benedikt wondered if it was going to rain again. He also wondered what the hell he was going to say to Mats later, given that Mats would actually answer the door and let him in and how he was going to rack up the courage to go and knock on his door? Where was Mats right now? And how long would it take him to get home? Benedikt would eventually need to tell his parents where he was if he stayed out too late.

“Do you want to go inside?” Manuel asked.

“Yeah, let’s go. I’m hungry.”

Manuel smiled slightly at his friend and thumped his back before they stood up and began their hike to the front door. If the quality of the food could be based on the outside of Julian’s house, they could definitely look forward to a good meal.

\-----

Not only was the meal amazing, but the inside of Julian’s house was spectacular. And warm. The moment Benedikt slipped off his shoes and dumped his backpack and poster board by the front door, he felt comfortable and welcome.

When Julian introduced Benedikt and Manuel to his parents, they seemed thrilled that Julian had some friends over and immediately asked what they would like for dinner.

“I’m not too picky,” Benedikt told them politely, smiling.

“Steak with Nutella. And pasta with grape tomatoes and peppers. Oh, and mashed potatoes! And salad with those little bread things--” Benedikt had to elbow Manuel to get him to shut up while Julian laughed.

While Julian’s dad cooked, Julian, Manuel and Benedikt went up to Julian’s room and played Mario Kart on his Wii. Julian and Manuel were very good. Benedikt was terrible. He kept falling off the course and was lapped by not only his friends, but by a few CPUs as well.

Julian was having a great time. He decided he wanted to have friends over more often.

Delicious smells wafted upstairs and Benedikt’s mouth watered. If he wasn’t mistaken, Julian’s dad was making dessert for them as well. After what seemed like hours, they were finally called down to dinner. Benedikt hadn’t noticed when it became dark outside. Mats surely must be home by this time on a Thursday night; it’s not like he did any school clubs or sports.

Benedikt enjoyed the dinner (which happened to be Manuel’s requested pasta with a few extra ingredients thrown in, sausage among them, and a brilliant salad) and talking to Julian’s parents very much, but he grew increasingly nervous throughout the meal, knowing that the second their plates were cleared, he would have no excuse to go and check if Mats was home. He almost regretted his desire to give Mats a chance. Maybe Manuel was right. And putting aside talking to Mats, Benedikt and Manuel would still need to tell Julian’s parents or someone at the school what had been going on. He was dreading that even more than talking to Mats; he felt guilty every time he saw Julian’s parents’ happy, unknowing faces. They had no idea the real reason Benedikt and Manuel had come home with Julian in the first place.

After finishing dessert (a cranberry and pecan tart) and helping to put away dishes, Benedikt thanked Julian’s parents and followed Manuel and Julian back upstairs. It was now well past seven o’clock.

“I have so much homework,” Julian groaned, collapsing onto his bed. “Mr. Löw is relentless.”

“I cram all mine during study hall,” Manuel said distractedly. He pulled out Julian’s desk chair and took a seat, shooting Benedikt a look: _Are you going to go now?_

Benedikt nodded. What else? He leaned against the doorframe, chewing his lip and waiting for Julian to stop talking about school and homework so he could drop the bomb and casually mention that it was time to go next door and have a head-to-head with the douchiest guy at school.

Apparently, Julian had spent way too much time around Thomas because he would not shut up. Though it simply was not like Julian at all to be talking any more than was absolutely necessary; Benedikt knew he was trying to avoid the very discussion they needed to have right now. So finally, Manuel cut him off.

“Hey, Jule, Benni’s about to go talk to Mats--” Benedikt gulped-- “So if you want to go with him…” Manuel trailed off and grimaced slightly, the answer obvious on Julian’s suddenly turned white face.

“No, no, I’m good, I’ll just wait here,” he said quickly, his voice rising an octave higher. Poor kid. What had Mats done to him?

“Alright. It’s fine. I’ll be back soon,” Benedikt told his friends, sounding not much better off than Julian had. And before he could overthink it, he stepped into the hall and (accidentally) slammed Julian’s door shut, nerves flooding his bloodstream.

He half-walked, half-hopped downstairs and managed to pull on his shoes and escape out the front door without Julian’s parents noticing-- what he was going to tell them when he got back, he’d figure that out later. _Later_. How long was this going to take? Maybe he should just take his backpack with him and find a way home on his own (Julian’s parents had offered him and Manuel rides home, if they needed them). He was already halfway to what he presumed to be Mats’ place though, based on where his truck was parked, and right now his brain would be no help in explaining to Julian’s parents what the hell he was doing. He could just text Manuel to take his backpack and make up a story about where he’d gone if it came to that. Or Manuel could just tell them the truth and -- Oh god, this was so fucked up and Benedikt hadn’t even knocked on Mats’ door yet.

Mats’ front door? How was he already here? He had no recollection of crossing the vast front lawn, which, unlike Julian’s lawn, was dark without its lamps on. But here he stood, at Mats’ front door and his heart was pounding like crazy and his mouth was as dry as a desert and he felt light headed and his stomach was doing acrobatics and threatening to lose the dinner Julian’s dad had worked so hard on. _Get your shit together_.

Shaking all over like a scared child, from both the cold (why he had not thought to bring his own jacket today was a mystery) and nerves, Benedikt lifted his hand and pressed on the doorbell.


	8. A New Friend

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Benedikt makes a new friend.

Benedikt didn’t know what he’d been expecting. But whatever it was, it definitely hadn’t been for a girl who looked to be about age six to poke her face through a small opening in the door.

She took one look at Benedikt and disappointment melted across her small body; her face fell and her shoulders slumped. She’d wanted mommy and daddy to come home, not another one of Mats’ scary friends.

Benedikt apparently found her to be just as scary as she found him.

“Uh,” he stammered. “Is your… brother? Uh…” He assumed the girl was Mats’ little sister -- she had the same dark curly hair and pretty eyes, the same tanned skin. The only difference was that she looked pure and innocent with her rumpled school outfit and crooked braids and wide eyes while Mats more closely resembled a stoner gone wrong. Nonetheless, he was still insanely gorgeous. Corrupt as hell, but gorgeous.

Mats’ sister’s mouth fell open as she stared at Benedikt. Benedikt didn’t know where to look or what to say; he picked at his fingers while he waited for the girl to either let him in or shut the door on him.

Finally, she pulled the door open a little more and stepped aside to allow Benedikt through. Benedikt entered the house and closed the door behind him.

It was cold in the house. Cold and dark, with just a few lights on here and there.

“You shouldn’t let strangers into the house,” Benedikt advised her.

“What’s your name?” the girl asked curiously, crossing her arms and peering up at Benedikt.

Benedikt told her and edged a little further into the house. Where the hell was Mats?

“Benedikt,” she repeated.

“Yeah. Benedikt. Sometimes people call me ‘Benni’. Do you know where your brother is?” Benedikt said, looking around for a light to turn on or a thermostat to turn up. “Are your parents home?”

“No,” the girl answered lightly. She hadn’t averted her eyes from Benedikt since she opened the door. “They’re not home. They won't come home until I’m already asleep. Mats is supposed to give me dinner but he never does. Can you make me something to eat?’

“Wh- uh, sure. What do you want?” It vaguely crossed Benedikt’s mind that this poor little girl was so hungry and lonely that she was willing to let a complete stranger into the house and ask him to make her something to eat. Granted, this was a safe neighborhood and she had probably mistaken him for one of Mats’ friends. But what kind of friend of Mats’ would cook his little sister food when they could get high instead?

For the first time, a smile lit the little girl’s face. “Mac and cheese,” she said happily. Then she grabbed Benedikt’s hand and pulled him into the dimly lit kitchen.

 _What is happening to me?_ thought Benedikt as a box of macaroni and cheese was shoved into his hands by an overenthusiastic six year old. _I’ve been made into an impromptu babysitter_.

But there was no way he wouldn’t make the mac and cheese for Mats’ younger sister, despite how strange this whole evening was turning out to be.

“Can you turn on some lights for me?” Benedikt asked. She did as she was told then scampered back to Benedikt, who was now opening cabinets in search of a pot. He found one, filled it with water, then set it on the stove to boil.

Now that Benedikt could see properly, he took a proper look around the house. Style wise, it wasn’t much different from Julian’s, and it was decently clean. His eyes lingered wistfully on the happy family photos hanging on the walls. Still, Benedikt couldn’t get over how cold it was in here. Not just temperature wise, but there was something else cold about this house too. Something which Benedikt couldn’t quite pinpoint.

He poured the noodles into the water, stirred them, then glanced behind him. The girl was sitting at the kitchen table, picking her nose and swinging her legs back and forth, looking at Benedikt as if he had just dropped from the heavens.

It made Benedikt’s heart ache.

“Don't pick your nose. Are you cold?” he asked her. She nodded.

Benedikt bit his lip. There was nothing he could do about that. He didn’t know where the thermostat was and had nothing of his own to loan her. He was about to suggest she go up to her room and look for a jacket when she jumped lightly from her chair, padded across the kitchen and stopped behind Benedikt, holding her arms up as if she wanted Benedikt to lift her up.

With one arm, Benedikt scooped her up and put her against his hip, using his free hand to give the macaroni another stir. The girl snuggled into his shoulder and wrapped her legs tightly around Benedikt’s torso.

“Thanks for making me mac and cheese, Benni,” she said softly, shyly.

“I’m more than happy to make it for you,” Benedikt said, meaning it. Then he realized he didn’t know the girl’s name. “What’s your name?”

She told him.

“Kira,” Benedikt repeated. “I like that name. It’s pretty.”

Kira giggled. Benedikt smiled.

All of sudden, Benedikt heard a noise upstairs. It sounded like a typical household noise, a thump of sorts. Still, it shook the small amount of ease Benedikt had found in this house.

Kira noticed how Benedikt tensed up. “That’s just my brother,” she assured him matter-of-factly.

Benedikt’s eyes widened. “Is he upstairs?”

“Yeah.”

_Then why hadn’t he come down to find out who the hell was with his younger sister?_

Benedikt figured he was probably so drugged up, he didn’t even notice. He gave the macaroni one final stir then concluded it was ready. He shut off the stove. Then, with difficulty because he only had one arm, he lifted the pot and brought it over the sink to try and drain it.

His hand slipped and the pot crashed into the sink. All of the noodles spilled out among the dirty dishes. Kira gasped.

Benedikt felt his eyes welling up with tears.

This girl had put her trust in him (though Benedikt couldn’t figure out why) and he’d gone and dumped all her macaroni in the sink.

_Way to go, Benedikt._

Staring at all the useless noodles in the sink, a slight moan escaped his lips and his knees felt weak. He needed to put Kira down before he dropped her.

He needed to get out of here before he started crying in front of her. Before Mats came downstairs and found him. Before Kira’s parents came home and found him here with their daughter.

But Benedikt couldn’t do any of those things. He was rooted to the spot, frozen, unable to move as he stared at the sink in dismay.

“It’s okay,” Kira promised. “It was an accident. You can make another one.”

Then she climbed down. Benedikt heard her rummaging through the cabinets looking for another box. He knew it wasn’t good news when he heard her disappointed sigh.

“We’re all out,” she reported, her voice laced with sadness well beyond her age.

It took Benedikt a second to realize that it was himself who had just made a small choking gasp. And then there were tears running down his cheeks. He sunk to his ground, his back against the cabinets, and he covered his eyes with his elbow.

Kira had climbed into his lap seconds later and wrapped her small arms around him. “It’s okay,” she pleaded. “It’s okay, Benni.”

Benedikt told her it wasn’t.

\-----

There was not much going on upstairs in Mats’ bedroom. That was because Erik, Marco and Mario had gotten bored and left in search of something more exciting. They were not really friends with Mats, after all. They just hung out sometimes to smoke weed together. Marco and Mario were not in Mats’ crowd; they were good boys who needed to loosen up every once in a while. Erik was probably Mats’ closest friend, though Mats felt like all Erik ever wanted to do was smoke and drink and it sometimes annoyed him. Mats liked smoking and drinking, but he liked doing other things too. He just had no one to do them with because everyone who did things like go to movies and the mall and play football and go out to eat and do their homework happened to dislike Mats.

Benni was one of those people.

Mats was glad Benni didn’t like him. If Benni liked him, he might feel like he had to change his habits. And he didn’t want to do that. That would be much too hard.

Mats rolled over in his bed. He felt terrible. Smoking and drinking and eating McDonald's all at the same time was not a good combination. His husky, Silver, whined when he stopped petting her.

“Shhhh,” Mats hissed. He was not in the mood right now for anyone to be pissed off at him.

He thought he heard someone talking downstairs. It was too early for his parents to be home from work, way too early. Maybe it was Kira playing with her stuffed animals or something. He felt too terrible to care.

That’s when Mats saw the guy in the corner. Just sitting there. Staring at him. Mats’ throat tightened and his heart dropped into his already-sensitive stomach.

“Go away,” Mats croaked.

The stranger said nothing.

Why wasn’t Silver barking her head off at the intruder?

“Get rid of him, you useless piece of shit,” Mats grumbled to Silver. He patted her head affectionately as he spoke. Then he rubbed behind her ears. Silver liked that. She rolled over onto her back to thank Mats.

The man was still sitting in the corner, staring intently at Mats. Mats was sort of creeped. So he screamed just for the hell of it.

\-----

“I’m sorry I messed up the mac and cheese, Kira,” Benedikt said weakly. He wiped his eyes, trying to erase all the evidence that he had not only just cried in front of a six year old girl, but also needed her to comfort him and promise him she wasn’t upset and that everything was going to be okay.

This was definitely a milestone in his life Benedikt couldn’t wait to forget about. Talk about humiliating.

“It’s okay,” Kira assured him yet again. “It was an _accident_.” She looked intently at Benedikt, daring him to believe her. Then she stood up and tugged on Benedikt’s arm. “Come on. We have lasagna. You can have some too. You’ll feel better.”

Reluctantly, Benedikt pushed himself up, grimacing at how difficult it was. Then he followed Kira to the freezer.

Benedikt looked to her for permission.

She nodded. “It’s in there. You can get out two or we can share one.”

Benedikt opened the freezer and pulled out one box of microwaveable lasagna. He set it on the counter, pulled the tray out of the box, then followed the directions and slit the plastic wrap with a knife. He placed the tray in the microwave and set the microwave timer for four minutes.

While he waited, Kira wrapped herself around one of Benedikt’s legs, looking up at him endearingly.

Benedikt swallowed. Then he remembered how to smile, albeit ungracefully.

“Do you want to be friends?” Kira asked.

Benedikt frowned. Why was Mats’ sister so enraptured by him, anyway? All he’d done was invite himself into the house and ruin her mac and cheese. He couldn’t promise to be her friend. He was never going to see her again after he left tonight. All he’d do was disappoint her.

“Yes,” Benedikt said. “I want to be friends.”

\-----

The two new friends sat at the kitchen table, Kira happily snacking on her lasagna, Benedikt looking blankly out the window and trying to figure out why the hell Mats was the way he was. He lived in a great house in a great neighborhood with parents and a cute little sister and enough food to eat. What was it then? Benedikt himself hadn’t grown up much differently, though if he were to judge based on which part of the town he lived in, he could guess that his family didn’t have quite as much money to spare as Mats’ family.

“Benni!” Kira screeched, tapping him on the arm.

Benedikt jumped as he was pulled out of his trance. The little girl had been trying to catch his attention for several minutes and he had completely spaced out, thinking about Mats and how hot he was and wondering how exactly he ended up in his house feeding his little sister dinner (granted, he hadn't expected anything more from Mats).

Benedikt shook his head to clear it, then turned to give his attention to Kira. She was holding out a forkful of lasagna, looking very annoyed. “Do you want some?”

Truthfully, Benedikt didn’t want any. His appetite was nowhere to be found, and not only because he’d eaten his heart out at Julian’s. But he opened his mouth anyway and leaned down so Kira could reach.

She poked the fork into his mouth and Benedikt swallowed the lasagna. It wasn’t bad.

“Isn’t it yummy?” Kira asked him, looking instantly happy again.

“Yes. It’s delicious,” said Benedikt, grinning. He smacked his lips and Kira laughed. She looked beautiful when she laughed.

Benedikt wondered if he could ever get her older brother to laugh like that.

\-----

When Kira (with some help from Benedikt) finished her lasagna, Benedikt took her hand and allowed her to lead him upstairs to her room.

It was dangerous territory if Mats was indeed up here, too. Benedikt decided he’d put her to bed quickly then get the hell out of here. How long had he been here? Manuel hadn’t texted him yet, so it couldn’t have been long.

But Kira wanted Benedikt to read _Junie B. Jones is a Party Animal_ to her after she had changed into her pajamas and brushed her teeth and Benedikt helped take out her braids, so his plan to tuck her in and escape didn’t look like it was going to work. Benedikt had to admit he enjoyed the book, though. He thought Junie B. would’ve been a great friend to have in kindergarten. Kira nuzzled up against him in her bed, giggling whenever Junie B. did something funny.

Benedikt read for a long time. His mouth was getting dry and he felt thirsty. He could also tell Kira was getting tired because there was a lot less giggling going on and a lot more yawning.

Benedikt marked the page and set the book on Kira’s nightstand. He glanced at her Hello Kitty digital clock. It was 9:36.

Kira’s eyes were shut and her head rested comfortably on Benedikt’s chest. _Oh no,_ Benedikt thought. _She’s fallen asleep on me_. It was sweet and all, but... How was he going to get out now?

He tried to inch his way out, but Kira’s eyes fluttered open the second he moved.

“Benni?” She muttered sleepily.

“Hm?”

“What happened to your arms?”

Benedikt look at his arms, panicking slightly. He’d forgotten about his trek through the woods today. It seemed so long ago. There were now several long, thin raw-looking welts along his skin.

“Uh,” he said quickly. “Nothing. I just got cut a little. It’s okay.” For some reason, it made him feel dishonest and nervous not telling Kira what he’d really been doing with her brother that afternoon. He tried to reassure her by smiling, but the sad look on her face told him it didn’t work.

“Does it hurt?”

Benedikt shook his head and assured her it didn’t hurt.

“We have bandaids downstairs. You should put one on,” Kira said smartly. Her eyes were once again wide open.

“I’ll put one on,” he told her. “After you go to sleep, I’ll go downstairs and get a bandaid.”

She nodded. “My brother’s arms look like that, too.”

Benedikt almost spat in surprise. “Do they?” he blabbered stupidly.

“Yeah.”

Benedikt could only think of one reason why Mats’ arms could look like that. Or maybe he was just being paranoid.

Either way, Benedikt had heard too much and he couldn’t wait to get out of this estranged house. Biting his tongue, he shifted away from Kira and out of her bed. He tucked her in with her favorite stuffed giraffe and kissed her forehead when she’d asked him to. He plugged in her butterfly shaped night light and turned off the main one.

He was about to close her door and breathe properly for the first time all night (he really did like Kira but it was stressful, being in Mats Hummels’ house, expecting his parents to come parading through the door at any minute and arrest him for trespassing and all) when he heard his name coming from the little girl’s bed.

He turned around, hand still on the door handle.

“Can you stay here until I fall asleep?” she said in a small voice.

“Of course.”

And Benedikt was in her room again, the night light casting deformed shadows on her light purple walls as he made himself comfortable in her polka dot bean bag. He waited until he heard her steady, rhythmic breathing to slip out of the room and into the hallway.

“Good night, Kira,” he whispered before shutting her door as lightly as he could.

And that’s when he heard the scream. It came from not the room of the little girl he’d just left, but from the opposite end of the hall.


	9. Firsts and Seconds

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Benedikt locates Mats.

Benedikt flung open the door to the bedroom at the end of the hall where he’d heard the scream. In the room, he found Mats Hummels fully dressed and curled up in a fetal position on a bed that probably hadn’t been made in years. Next to him lay a gorgeous husky, eyeing her owner with such a deep look of pity that it made Benedikt uneasy.

When he’d first heard the scream, Benedikt had panicked, his heart jumping around in his throat and his body going numb. But now, he was just confused. He stood in the doorway, squinting through the dark at the uneventful scene before him.

“ _Why,_ Mats,” he announced, “did you just scream?”

Mats whined in response, shifting closer to his husky. It took Benedikt a second to figure out that Mats was probably either drunk or high beyond imagining and that he was nowhere near a right state of mind. Shaking his head, Benedikt crossed the room, nearly tripping over several piles of clothes in the process, and knelt down next to Mats’ bed. He reached out and found Mats’ shoulder.

“Hey,” he said, softening his tone significantly from his initial greeting. “Look at me.”

Mats had been squeezing his eyes shut, but he opened them when he heard Benni’s gentle voice next to him. The outline of Benni’s worried face swam into his vision, his lips slightly parted as he looked at Mats.

“There’s a guy in the corner staring at me,” Mats revealed, sounding more like a scared child than the douchey dickwad he was.

Benedikt glanced to the corner, keeping a protective hand on Mats’ shoulder. He checked all four corners of the room, but there was no one there who fit Mats’ description. There was no one there at all. Benedikt’s stomach lurched. Mats was either dreaming or hallucinating. There would be no use in telling Mats there wasn’t actually anyone there, because to him, it was real.

“Go to sleep,” Benedikt muttered. “I’ll get him to leave. You just go to sleep.”

Mats squeezed his eyes shut again. “I can’t, Benni,” he said desperately. “I can’t. He’s still staring at me, I can feel it.”

On the other side of Mats, the husky lifted her head, moonlight reflecting off her clear blue eyes. Benedikt pursed his lips, his grip on Mats’ shoulder tightening without him realizing it. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing. For the first time, he was seeing Mats Hummels without the mask of self-hatred he usually wore to protect himself. It made Benedikt feel sad and helpless. What was he supposed to do? The only thing he knew how to do was yell at Mats and criticize him. What was he supposed to do now?

As if on cue, the husky pushed herself up and leaped gracefully off Mats’ bed. She pattered across the room and slipped out the open door. There was a patch of moonlight illuminating the space on the bed which she’d left.

Would Mats be okay about Benedikt staying?

Benedikt stood up and Mats whined, clumsily reaching out to where Benedikt had been. His arms were too heavy though and they flopped uselessly back onto the mattress. “Stay,” he begged.

“I’m staying,” Benedikt promised. “You don’t look very comfortable, though. I’m going to take your jeans off, okay?”

Mats nodded obediently while Benedikt fumbled with the button and zipper, eventually prying them loose and pulling Mats’ jeans down his legs. His fingers brushed against Mats’ thighs as he did so, burning his fingertips and making Mats twitch ever so slightly. When he was finished, he tossed the jeans onto the floor then got to work on Mats’ jacket, tugging down the zipper and sliding the material off his arms. He tried to avoid touching Mats’ skin; he didn’t want to find out yet if what Kira had warned him of was true. He discarded the jacket on top of the jeans.

“There, finished,” Benedikt said breathlessly, staring down at Mats in his boxers and t-shirt. “Better?”

“Cold,” Mats replied.

Benedikt climbed over Mats and settled into the bed. He did his best to pull the covers over both himself and Mats, but it was difficult because they were so twisted up. Eventually, he gave up and shoved the covers back to the foot of the bed, muttering a few choice words in frustration.

“I’m cold,” complained Mats.

“I know,” said Benedikt listlessly, laying on his back and examining the blank ceiling. “Me too. There’s no heat in this fucking house.”

“I’m sorry. I forgot to turn it up.”

“Your little sister didn’t have any dinner.”

“Sorry.”

“I’m sorry, too.”

Mats didn’t say anything more. He and Benedikt lay still in the bed, not touching each other, not looking at each other. The only sounds were of their breathing until Mats couldn’t stand it anymore.

He scooted closer to Benni and cocooned himself into the blond. When Benni didn’t push him away, Mats immediately relaxed in the warmth of the other body, feeling himself become very sleepy.

And ignoring every instinct screaming inside him that this was a terrible idea, Benedikt rolled onto his side and wrapped his arms around Mats, pulling him closer and tangling their legs together. There were so many things to talk about, so many things wrong, but that could wait until tomorrow or never. He slipped his hand under Mats’ t-shirt and rubbed his icy skin, slowly, soothingly. Benedikt felt his eyelids growing heavy and his breathing soon synchronized with his hand moving up and down Mats’ steelish back.

Eventually, Benedikt’s hand stopped moving altogether, resting against Mats’ spine as they fell asleep together.

\-----

At around half past three in the morning, Benedikt woke up very suddenly with a fever.

His and Mats’ foreheads were pressed together, their noses brushing, and their legs and arms were a cozy mess. He could feel Mats’ breath against his lips, snoring softly. Benedikt was too warm. He needed some air.

He tried to disengage himself from Mats to no avail. Mats was incredibly clingy and Benedikt was too weak. He moaned in discomfort and Mats’ eyes flew open.

For a few seconds, they just stared into each other’s eyes. Benedikt’s lips quivered and Mats, his drunken-McDonald’s-marijuana state having been alleviated by sleep, registered how hot and dry Benedikt's forehead was.

“You’re really hot,” Mats mumbled against Benni’s lips, which were as equally hot and dry.

Caught up in a feverish, middle-of-the-night haze, Benni giggled. “I know. You are too. You’re beautiful. I wish you were nicer.”

Mats didn’t want to smile, but he did. It was too late at night/early in the morning to retain any sense. The corners of his mouth turned up and he poked his tongue between his lips. Benni’s lips were so parched, so warm. It couldn’t hurt if he just…

Mats’ lips were cool and moist against Benni’s. It felt good, relieving. It felt even better when Mats slid his sweet tongue into Benni’s mouth, quenching the dryness and eliminating the sickly taste that had gathered there.

It wasn’t a storybook first kiss. But it would do.

When Mats inched away, Benni protested.

“What’s wrong?” Mats muttered.

“I need you,” Benni pleaded, his eyes reflecting sadness. “I don’t feel good.”

“We have Tylenol downstairs. I need some too. Let’s go.” Mats carefully shifted to sit up and drop his legs over the side of the bed, not wanting to hurt Benni. Then he helped Benni up, keeping a firm hold on him as they stood.

“Why can’t you just bring it up to me?” whimpered Benni. “I don’t want to get up.”

“Because you need to drink some water, too.”

The cold floor was unforgiving against Mats’ bare feet as he half guided, half carried Benni through the dimly lit hallway and downstairs to the medicine cabinet in the kitchen. There were a few lights on downstairs and the heat was running, meaning Mats’ parents had come home from work and gone to bed.

The lights made Benni’s head pound and he started seeing black. He was glad Mats was holding him.

Mats fished through the medicine cabinet, keeping one hand wrapped around Benni’s forearm. He emerged with a small bottle of white capsules. Then he led Benni to the table and sat him down in a chair before he crossed the kitchen again, pulled a tall glass from a cabinet and filled it with tap water.

Even through his delirium, Benedikt was still enjoying the view of Mats in only his shirt and boxers, seeing the way his calves stretched so elegantly as he moved and his shoulder blades shifting as he turned the sink on and off, his messy hair that Benni longed to run his fingers through. Benedikt smiled. Mats was truly gorgeous.

When Mats turned from the sink, he saw Benedikt sitting in the chair, grinning like a doofus with his eyes half shut and his hair all rumpled and his cheeks red from dehydration. “What are you smiling at?” Mats teased.

“You’re so pretty. You’re gorgeous,” said Benni giddily. “I want to feel your hair.”

Mats rolled his eyes, setting the glass down on the table and opening the Tylenol bottle. “Let’s see if you still want to after this medicine does its job.” He shook the bottle and handed two capsules to Benni, then dropped two in his own mouth and swallowed them dry.

Mats Hummels didn’t have many talents, but one thing he could do was swallow pills dry, any size and any shape. And fortunately, Benedikt seemed to be decently impressed.

While Benni swallowed the capsules and sipped on his water, Mats pulled out a chair and sat next to him. He propped his head up in his hand, elbow on the table, and watched Benni affectionately as he drank, his Adam’s apple moving up and down as he swallowed. Benni watched back over the rim of the glass.

 _Just coupley things: popping pills together at three in the morning because you both feel like trash,_ Mats thought amusedly to himself until he abruptly remembered that he and Benni weren’t actually a couple and were probably the most opposite thing of being a couple.

Ten seconds later, the glass was empty.

“More?” Mats asked. Benni nodded, and Mats was on his feet again refilling Benni’s glass. When he returned to the table, he asked Benedikt if he wanted anything to eat.

“Twinkies,” replied Benedikt, going to work on his second glass.

Mats blinked. Benni wanted _Twinkies_. “Do you really want Twinkies, Benni?”

Benni nodded. He did really want Twinkies.

“How badly do you want them?”

“Very badly.”

Well. If Benni wanted Twinkies, then Mats was going to get Benni some Twinkies.

“Alright,” Mats said smartly. “We don’t have any Twinkies here, I’m afraid. But we can drive to 7-11 and I’ll buy you some? It’s only about ten minutes away.”

“Sounds good,” Benedikt said, grinning. Mats grinned back. He was taking Benedikt out at four in the morning to buy Twinkies at 7-11.

It wasn’t a storybook first date. But it would do.

“I gotta pee first,” Benedikt informed Mats. So Mats showed him where the bathroom was and waited outside while Benni peed, flushed the toilet and washed his hands (in that order).

“Ready?” Mats asked when Benni was all done.

“Ready,” Benedikt answered.

They pulled on their shoes and Mats a pair of sweatpants then silently left the house, closing the door so carefully it was like they were trying to avoid setting off a bomb. Which, in a way, they were, though in this case the bomb was Mats’ parents.

“Fuck,” Mats groaned as they were greeted by the icy, dark night. “It’s cold as shit out here.”

Benedikt’s teeth were chattering too wildly to verbally agree. Once they were inside Mats’ truck, the temperature was not much better, but the familiar fragrance of McDonald’s nuggets and marijuana did make Benedikt’s stomach feel funny. Mats’ turned on the engine and blasted the heat, but the air coming out of the vents wasn’t warm yet.

“Fuck,” Mats said under his breath, putting his hand up to the vent. “Fucking useless piece of old shit truck.”

Benni leaned his head against the window and closed his eyes. The excitement of going downstairs had worn off and he still felt feverish. The Tylenol had not yet kicked in, though he was beginning to regain a little bit of his sense and starting to question how he ended up in Mats Hummels’ truck at four in the morning on a Friday, on his way to get Twinkies. He had feeling in the back of his mind that there was going to be a lot of shit to work out later on. But all he could focus on now was how crappy he felt and how majestic Mats Hummels was.

“What the fuck...” Mats mumbled for the fifth time since getting in the truck. He had been turning the heat on and off, waiting for it to stop blowing icy air at Benedikt, who was already shivering so much that Mats was afraid he’d freeze and crack a bone. “God fucking dammit,” Mats added.

Eventually, Mats gave up on his piece of shit truck and scooted over on his seat to be closer to Benni. In this moment, he was eternally grateful that he had a pickup truck and that there was no barrier between the driver’s and passenger’s seats; the seating was simply one continuous bench.

Their knees brushed together and Benni lifted his head from the window.

“You okay?” Mats asked nervously. He searched Benni’s eyes for any sign that this was still okay. He knew that how Benni had been acting since he woke up was all part of a feverish delirium and that he’d taken a little advantage of that. But now, Benni was slowly reentering reality and Mats was thinking about what a horrible, evil mistake he’d made. He bit his lip, praying to the gods above that Benni wasn’t going to be mad.

“As long as I’m still with you.”

Mats felt his stomach flipping upside down. _As long as I’m still you with._ He couldn’t be sure that Benni had really just said that.

“Let me see your arms,” Benni said suddenly. He shifted closer to Mats, pressing their legs together. He didn’t wait for Mats’ permission to take one of Mats’ arms in his icy hands. He ran his fingertips along Mats’ smooth skin, feeling for any breaks in its continuity and leaving chills wherever his fingertips touched.

Mats gulped when Benni found what he was obviously searching for.

“What’s this?” Benni asked, sounding upset, rubbing his thumb slowly over the uneven area on Mats' forearm.

“It’s a burn,” Mats said quietly. His heart was beating so fast from Benni’s touch that he was afraid it would leap right out of his chest.

“Why the hell would you that?” Benni demanded.

“I didn’t do it on purpose,” Mats replied shortly, surprised by Benedikt’s fervor. What did Benni think it was?

“Why the hell would you burn yourself?”

“I don’t know _why_ because I didn’t fucking do it on purpose, Benedikt,” Mats retorted, biting each word. He hated the effect that Benni’s fingers were having on him. It made him feel powerless. “Stop touching me.”

Benni quickly withdrew his hands and inched away from Mats, his feelings hurt. He crossed his arms and looked down at his feet. God, he wished his head would stop pounding. It felt like he was carrying a cinderblock around on his neck.

It was silent for a few moments, the only noise the sound of the heat coming on, this time with actual warm air. Mats frowned, wondering if he should just drive Benedikt home right now and wondering how the hell this was happening in the first place. Why the fuck was Benni even here? They certainly hadn’t planned on meeting up, and even if they had, they probably would have chosen a time other than 3 AM on a Friday. Mats was confused. He couldn’t say he really minded having Benedikt here, though.

Benedikt squeezed his eyes shut, wanting nothing more than to be home. Mats didn’t want him. Mats didn’t even want him here, Benedikt was the one who invited himself over (he hardly recalled his original purpose for coming, after meeting Kira and now everything with Mats) and practically knocked down Mats’ bedroom door then fell asleep in his bed. Mats probably hated him. Mats _did_ hate him.

“I’m sorry,” Benedikt said dryly, breaking the silence. He looked up and caught Mats’ eyes. Mats nodded, encouraging him to go on. Benedikt swallowed and continued. “I just thought… I don’t know why… I thought you did it on purpose. Your little sister told me… “

He couldn’t finish though because his throat was in knots and besides, Mats had covered Benni’s mouth with his own for the second time that night and it wasn’t long before Benni was laying on top of him, running his hands through his thick, soft mop of hair and enjoying every second of it. God, Benni tasted like the best candy in the world, even when he was sick. Mats couldn’t get enough. He cupped Benni’s dry cheeks, pulling him in even closer and moaning desperately into his mouth while Benni reciprocated. It was the best feeling in the world. Mats could have gone on forever with the occasional break for air, but then Benni had to sneeze and they broke apart, laughing.

Benni wondered if he’d ever get to hear Mats laugh like that again.


	10. Blank Space

“Twinkies are shit.”

“They are _not_ ,” Mats exclaimed through a mouthful of Twinkies.

Benedikt scrunched up his nose. He couldn’t believe that Mats was actually eating that garbage. He looked up at the sky and was horrified to see that it was getting lighter. It was Friday morning. They had school today. And they were currently sitting on the sidewalk with their backs against the dingy brick wall of 7-11, Mats stuffing his face with Twinkies and Doritos and Benni watching in disgust.

 _Well,_ thought Benni glumly. _At least I’m already dressed_.

The Tylenol had done him well and Benedikt felt better, despite being incredibly tired. Slowly, he was beginning to piece together the last 12 hours and trying to figure out what to do about it.

The first thing he needed to do, probably, was check his phone. Though, strangely, no one had called or texted him…

Oh. His phone had been on silent and he just hadn’t bothered to look at it since entering Mats’ house last night. He had about 30 texts and missed calls, most of them from Manuel, a few from his mother, and one or two from an unknown number he assumed to be Julian. He sighed and began reading through all of them while Mats was occupied by his snacks.

_From: Manu_

_8:11 - So how’s it going?_

_8:19 - Did you talk to him?_

_8:21 - Benni?_

_8:46 - Hey is everything okay?_

_8:47 - I’m coming over there if you don’t answer_

_8:51 - BENNI_

_8:51 - BENEDIKT (you don’t even have a middle name right?) HÖWEDES_

_8:57 - No one answered the door when I knocked…_

_9:13 - Benni I am about to call the police what are you doing_

_9:18 - ANSWER YOUR PHONE_

_9:34 - I just went home and I took your backpack with me, thanks for making me have to explain to Julian’s parents where the fuck you went_

_9:48 - I told them you had an emergency piano lesson but you forgot to bring your backpack with you because it was an emergency because your piano teacher charged students for being late (it made more sense when I told it trust me I’m not that bad of a liar)_

_10:10 - Jesus christ_

_10:12 - I give up_

_11:01 - I’ll see you at school tomorrow, I’ll bring your backpack and posterboard. Your mom called me earlier by the way I told her you were fine_

Benedikt chuckled at Manuel’s messages, making a mental note to harass him about his piano lesson tale. He typed back a quick response, telling Manuel he ended up sleeping at Mats’ house and everything was fine and not to send him 50 texts because he would explain later.

That was the easy part. The hard part was going to be explaining this to his mom and admitting to Julian that he hadn’t accomplished the one thing he’d gone over to Mats’ house for.

Talking to Mats about how he’d blackmailed Julian.

Benedikt’s stomach plummeted. Though he didn’t want to admit it, he’d had a pretty good time with Mats and he hated to remind himself exactly what kind of person Mats was.

A cold-hearted dick. Who was currently binging on Twinkies and resting with his head on Benedikt’s shoulder.

Benedikt sighed heavily and wrapped his arms around his legs, resting his forehead on his knees.

“You poor thing,” Mats said happily, slumping against Benedikt’s side. “You’re sick and we’re leaving for school in two hours.”

“I feel fine, Mats,” Benedikt said listlessly. “I’m just stressed out.”

“Why? If it’s about the project, don’t be stressed about that because I promise I’ll help you this--”

“It’s not about the project. It’s about what you’ve been doing to Julian.” The words tumbled unrestrained out of Benedikt’s mouth, surprising both himself and Mats.

Mats jerked back away from Benedikt. “What?”

Benedikt sat up and looked at Mats with a cold, hard expression. “You know exactly what I’m talking about.”

Mats looked uncomfortable. “I have no idea what you're talking about,” he said unconvincingly.

Benedikt narrowed his eyes. “Okay, Mats. You blackmail Julian and steal his money so you can buy drugs. You don't take care of your little sister. You know I had to feed her dinner and put her to bed last night because you couldn't get your stoned ass downstairs and act responsible? It's not even about being responsible, Mats, it's about having a heart and _using_ it. What even are you? I can't believe I'm attracted to you, I can't believe it.”

Mats opened his mouth, but Benedikt cut him off, becoming more heated the more he let out. “And what was with you writing that you hated me all over your worksheet? What is _wrong_ with you? You’re cold-hearted and rude and you have issues that you won’t even admit to having. When are you ever going to fix yourself?”

“I am not cold-hearted!” Mats argued.

Benedikt raised an eyebrow. “Yeah?”

“Because I like you. I like you a lot, Benni, I just don’t know how to--”

Benedikt shook his head, effectively cutting Mats off. “That’s not the point, stop trying to turn this around. I want to know when you plan on giving Julian back his money and what you’re going to make Kira for dinner tonight. I don’t care if you love or hate me, but I will not allow you to treat other people like garbage and get away with it, especially my friends and _your_ little sister. Do you know why I came over to your house last night looking for you?”

Mats thought this over for a second, frowning. “Uh, no. I was just about to ask you, actually, because it seems like I’m the last person in the world you want to spend any time with.”

Benedikt turned away from Mats. He cupped his face in his hands, rubbing his eyes, and let his elbows rest on his knees.

There was so much to talk to Mats about, and he didn’t even know where to begin. This conversation was going absolutely nowhere.

He felt Mats moving closer until their shoulders touched.

“Just so you know, my parents only come home late from work on Thursdays. They’ll make her dinner tonight,” Mats said lightly.

“That’s a relief,” said Benedikt stiffly. “I hope you’re not lying to me.”

“I’m not lying to you.”

“Good.” Benedikt closed his eyes. He was exhausted and the sun was only rising. It was pretty, and it wasn’t often that Benedikt was up early enough to see the sunrise. But he didn’t feel like looking at it right now. He wouldn’t be able to appreciate it.

Mats, meanwhile, was enjoying the showcase of colors in the sky. He popped a gummy worm in his mouth like it was popcorn and the sunrise was a movie.

Mats chewed and swallowed his gummy worm. “Do you believe I’m not lying to you?”

“Yes.”

“Do you want a gummy worm?”

“Yes, please.”

Mats pushed a blue and red gummy worm against Benni’s mouth. Benni parted his lips and let Mats poke the worm in. He nipped Mats’ finger a little before Mats could pull away. Mats didn’t mind.

When Benni was finished with his worm, he said flatly, “I came over to your house last night because I wanted to talk to you about the money you were taking from Julian before we told someone else and you got in trouble. I don’t want you to get in trouble, Mats. I want you to fix your own mistakes, not have a cop fix them for you by sending you to a diversion program.”

“I’ve already been to diversion,” Mats said. “I don’t like people telling me what to do.”

“How’d you end up there?” Benedikt asked, genuinely curious. He fiddled with his thumbs as he listened to Mats, staring at the cars driving by. The longer they sat here, the more the road filled up with cars. Occasionally, one would pull into the 7-11 and its driver would enter the store and come out with a Coke or an iced tea or coffee before driving off again.

“Because I was smoking weed,” answered Mats casually.

“Have you ever done any harder drugs?” Benedikt asked.

“No,” supplied Mats. “I drink sometimes. But nothing else.”

Benedikt sighed. It could’ve been a sigh of relief. Or maybe just stress. “I just want you to pay Julian back and never do something like this again,” he said wistfully. “That’s all. I’m letting you off loose here because I care about you even though I shouldn’t.”

Mats nodded slowly. “I’ll think about it.”

A moment passed.

“I finished thinking about it. I decided I’ll pay him back and apologize.”

“An apology won’t magically fix everything,” Benedikt warned.

Mats shrugged. “It’s a start, though.”

“It’s a start,” Benedikt agreed. “But if you start then you should keep going.”

“I’ll keep going,” Mats promised.

Benedikt nodded.

Mats put his hand on Benedikt’s leg. “Are we going to school together?”

“I don’t know,” Benedikt said. Mats lifted his hand from Benni’s leg and felt his forehead with the back of his hand.

“Your forehead feels okay.”

“Because Tylenol reduces fever.”

“So you’re okay.”

“I don’t want to go to school, Mats.”

Mats bit his lip. “Please come to school?”

“No,” Benedikt said simply.

“You can take more Tylenol when it wears off. I don’t want to go school without you, Benni. I want you to be there. Please come.”

Benedikt sucked in a breath. “Mats,” he said. “I’m sick. I got no sleep last night. I am stressed out. I’m not going to school today. I’m sorry. I’ll be there on Monday, but not today.”

Mats pouted, but said, “Alright. I understand.”

“Thanks for understanding. I really am sorry. I just want to go home and sleep.”

Mats swallowed. He knew that he and Benedikt couldn’t sit outside the 7-11, eating junk food and chatting forever, but he didn’t want it to end before it absolutely had to. “Do you want me to take you home?”

“I’d appreciate it.”

Mats nodded. “Okay.” He waited one second before picking up his snacks and standing up, then he held out a hand for Benni. Benni took his hand and let Mats pull him to his feet.

They didn’t let go even after Benni was up.

“I don’t know where you live,” Mats reminded him after they were settled in the truck.

“I’ll tell you where to go,” Benni assured him. After that, they didn’t speak unless Benni had to tell Mats to turn somewhere.

It was too quiet in the truck. So Mats turned on the radio. Mats Hummels didn’t have many talents, and singing was not one of his few talents. But sometimes, he couldn’t help singing along to a song he particularly liked.

“So hey, let’s be friends,” Mats sang quietly, sounding very off-key. “I’m dying to see how this one ends. Grab your passport and take my hand, I can make the bad guys good for a weekend…”

Benedikt looked over at him with a raised eyebrow.

“So it’s gonna be forever,” Mats sang, a little louder. “Or it’s gonna go down in flames.” He smiled sheepishly at Benni, deciding it might be best to just shut up.

But then Benni was singing along, and he sounded very good. “Got a long list of ex-lovers, they’ll tell you I’m insane, cause you know I love you players…”

Mats joined him for the last line. “And you love the game!”

Benedikt couldn’t sing the next verse because he was laughing, so Mats dropped out too, not wanting to embarrass himself after hearing Benni sing.

“We suck,” laughed Benedikt.

“ _I_ suck,” Mats corrected. “You don’t.”

But they sang the rest of the song together anyway, Benni occasionally snorting with laughter when Mats missed a note. Mats even missed a few notes on purpose just to hear the sound of Benni’s laugh. Each wondered how the other knew all the lyrics to a Taylor Swift song. Neither of them asked. They slapped hands in celebration when the song was done.

Much too soon, Mats pulled up in front of Benni’s house and silence hit them again like a rock. Benni wasn’t smiling anymore. He unbuckled his seatbelt, looking pale and sad and his eyes had bags underneath them.

Mats’ throat tightened. He tried to swallow, but it was too hard. Just like everything else in life was.

Benedikt bit his bottom lip and peered at Mats. He wanted to say something, but what was there to say? He resigned to opening the door instead, turning away from the other boy and getting ready to climb out.

“Wait,” Mats said, picking up the half-empty bag of gummy worms. Benni turned back, eyebrows raised in expectation. “You want the rest of these?”

Benni lowered his eyes. “No, thanks. Thanks for the ride.” Then he climbed out of the truck, mumbling something about a goodbye.

“Wait,” Mats said again before Benni could close the door and escape. “Can you give me your number? So we can work on the project this weekend?” Mats was willing to do all the lab safety projects in the world if it meant he got to spend a little more time with Benedikt.

Benedikt held out his hand, a guarded expression on his face. He looked at Mats, trying to see past his dark eyes for any foolery, but he found nothing other than an awkward, hopeful, and slightly nervous boy who desperately needed a haircut. Mats gave him his phone, and Benni put in his number then handed it back without a word.

“See ya,” Mats said brightly. He smiled hopefully at Benedikt, who only poked the tip of his tongue between his lips before closing the door and walking away, looking back over his shoulder once or twice before retreating into his house.

Benedikt liked Mats. He really did. But there was still a lot of work to do.


	11. Mats' Errands

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mats has a few errands to run while Benedikt is at school.

Mats didn’t go to school on Friday.

When he got back home after dropping Benni off, he collapsed into his bed and fell asleep. When he woke up again, stretching and yawning hugely, his parents had already taken Kira to school and left for work (they had given up on Mats, they didn’t care whether he went to school or not anymore just as long as he told them he was going to get a job and move out when he turned 18) so he was alone in the house. Even Silver was out in the backyard, playing with squirrels or something. He could do whatever he wanted.

Mats got naked in his bedroom, flinging his clothes onto the floor as he stripped, then strolled to the bathroom. He turned on the shower and stepped in. Goosebumps rose on his skin as the steaming water hit his back and slid down his body. He wondered what it would be like to take a shower with Benni. _Probably a lot of fun,_ Mats thought. _I could wash him and he could wash me_.

Sometimes Mats liked to jerk off in the shower. He didn’t want to today, though. He wanted to hurry up with his shower so he could get to the mall. He squeezed some of his sister’s shampoo on his palm and washed his hair. Then he scrubbed his face and quickly ran some soap across the rest of his body.

That was good enough. He shut off the water, dried his hair with a towel then wrapped it around his waist. Brushed his teeth. Returned to his bedroom. Dropped his towel on the floor and fished through mountains of dirty and clean clothes all mixed together to find something that didn’t smell like ass.

Once he was dressed, he sat on his bed with his phone to check the contact the Benni had made.

‘Benni’, it said, with the monkey face emoji after the ‘i’.

Mats felt himself smiling as he texted. He liked the feeling of the phone in his hand, knowing that Benni's hand had been here just a little while ago. _Hi its mats :) Whats your favorite color?_

\-----

Benedikt crawled into bed the second he got home. He fell asleep the second his head hit his pillow.

When it was time to wake up for school and Benedikt wasn’t downstairs, his mom checked his room to make sure he was there. She found him in his bed, fast asleep.

She noticed his alarm hadn’t gone off. Maybe he’d forgot to set it. Ignoring her instinct that she should just let her son sleep, she shook Benedikt’s shoulders gently and woke him up.

“I’m sick,” Benedikt murmured groggily, looking up imploring at her through the fog in his eyes. The last thing on earth he wanted to do right now was go to school.

She felt his forehead. It was a little warm, but nothing alarming. “I still want you to go to school today,” she said. “Then you’ll have the whole weekend to rest.”

So Benedikt went to school that day. He wasn’t surprised when Mats didn’t show his pretty face.

\-----

By the time Mats found himself roaming around a fancy department store in the mall, he still hadn’t heard back from Benni. He wasn’t worried, though; Benni was probably still sleeping. But he did hear from Erik, who wanted to know when they were going to smoke today since he didn’t come to school.

_To: Erik_

_I cant im at the mall_

_From: Erik_

_When you get back?_

_To: Erik_

_We’ll see_

Then Mats shoved his phone in his pocket and didn’t check it again.

He took inventory of his surroundings. He was in the makeup section. This was not where he needed to be. The only problem was, he didn’t know where he was supposed to go. So he walked around stupidly in a circle, looking for a sign or an escalator or something to get him the hell out of here. He felt claustrophobic. He hated this. The smell of perfume was overwhelming and made him want to throw up.

 _Fuck,_ thought Mats aggressively.

“Fuck,” he said aloud when just thinking it yielded no results. “I’m lost.” A couple old ladies glared at him then hurried off.

Well, standing there looking like a dumbass in the middle of the makeup section with a bunch of old ladies wasn’t going to help his situation much. So he marched off, keeping his eyes peeled. To his relief, it seemed like he was leaving the makeup behind and getting closer to the clothes and accessories. Unfortunately, they were all for women. Mats even checked the labels but they only confirmed that everything on this floor was for women.

He was getting frustrated. Mats swore again, this time drawing the attention of a store employee who was folding shirts.

“Can I help you with anything, sir?” she asked him patiently, setting down a folded shirt and awaiting Mats’ answer.

“Yeah. Where’s all the guys’ clothes?” Mats demanded.

The employee grimaced at his manners, or lack thereof. She’d seen worse, though. The kid seemed nice enough. He was just a little rough around the edges. “Are you looking for anything specific?”

“It’s for my friend,” Mats explained. “I’m getting him a scarf.” He left out the part where it was a replacement for the one he’d teased Benni about.

“That’s nice of you,” she told him, sounding pleasantly surprised. Then she gestured to an escalator off to the right. “You’ll find our men’s department on the second floor, accessories on the left when you first step off the escalator.”

“Thanks,” Mats said. Then, more likely to himself than to the employee, he mumbled, “I hope I can pick something that’s not hideous.”

The employee watched him stalk towards the escalator, debating whether or not to follow him and help him choose something nice. She decided against it though, figuring Mats wouldn’t want her to help.

 _You’re doing good, kid,_ she thought. _Keep on going._

\-----

Benedikt walked into 4th Period math, planning to pull a Mats Hummels and sit in the back of the classroom and sleep until the bell rang for lunch. If there was any class worth sleeping through, it was math; not only was it boring, but he could simply look up the lesson in the textbook when he got home.

But Benedikt’s plans were foiled when he sat down and was greeted by a thick white packet.

“What’s this?” Benedikt wondered aloud, flipping through it.

“That would be your test, Benedikt,” said Ms. McGrady sweetly. “Could you please wait until everyone else receives it to start?”

“Oh, no…” moaned Benedikt, letting the paper fall back onto his desk.

“You’ll do fine. You’ve done very well in this class so far, Benedikt. You are one of my top students,” Ms. McGrady informed him, smiling proudly, before leaving to continue passing out tests.

Benedikt didn’t follow directions and took a look at the problems on the first page, scowling. He recalled doing problems like this in class the other day, but of course he hadn’t gotten around to doing any of his homework last night and it all looked like straight up gibberish today. His heart sunk to the pit of his stomach. He was going to fail this test for sure.

 _I could just answer every single question as ‘I hate Mats’,_ he thought bitterly.

But he didn’t. He answered every single question with numbers, letters, and expressions he had calculated and prayed were correct. By the time he scribble down an answer to the last question, which required him to graph a very complicated equation, his neck was aching from looking down and his hand was cramping and his pencil was coated in sweat. Gross. He shook his hand out, whacking it on the side of his desk by accident.

“Ouch!” He yelped in pain, grabbing his hand as everyone in the room turned from their tests to look at him. He grinned sheepishly, giving a thumbs up to assure everyone he was A-okay.

Everything wasn’t A-okay though. He wanted to get the fuck home and go to sleep and ignore everything he had to do and forget about Mats Hummels.

He licked his lips and felt his ears getting warm. He wanted to forget that Mats Hummels’ mouth had ever been on his.

As he was dreamily recalling that majestical kiss in Mats’ truck last night/this morning, his phone buzzed, loudly, causing everyone’s heads to turn towards him once again. He fumbled through his pocket, his face burning. He pulled out his phone to switch it to silent, but not before he read the text that was glowing on the screen.

_Hi its mats :) Whats your favorite color?_

Benedikt’s heart started beating a mile a minute. What the hell was his favorite color? How was he supposed to know that? He thought it might be royal blue, but he wasn’t sure. Just as he started typing in an answer, he felt someone hovering above his desk. He looked up nervously.

Ms. McGrady was standing there with an outstretched arm and a disappointed frown.

Benedikt gulped and smiled innocently, moving to tuck his phone back away.

Ms. McGrady waved her fingers back and forth. _Give me the phone. There are absolutely no phones permitted while we are testing,_ her frown reminded Benedikt.

Slowly, Benedikt handed his phone over, the smile fading from his face as he realized what having his phone taken away would mean. He was less concerned that Ms. McGrady would no longer trust him or consider him her favorite student than he was worried about Mats.

He wouldn’t get to talk to Mats. And Mats would think he was ignoring him.

 _All for the better,_ Benedikt thought, trying to ignore the disappointment swimming through his body. Mats Hummels was no good, anyway. Mats Hummels was getting to his head. He didn’t even _like_ Mats Hummels, after all.

Who cared if Mats got in trouble? He deserved it. Who cared if Mats didn’t do the project? He’d be the one suffering in the end. Who cared about Mats? Not Benedikt. Probably no one.

\-----

Mats left the department store just as Blank Space began playing throughout the store. He felt relieved. He didn’t want to hear that song again.

 _Because they play it too much on the radio,_ he reasoned.

Every ten paces he took, Mats checked his shopping bag to make sure Benedikt’s scarf was still in there. And every time he checked, a wave of relief went through Mats that it was. He could’ve sworn it was thisclose to falling out back by American Eagle--

The memory sent Mats into a minor panic. Quickly, he looked into his shopping bag. Benni’s gift was still there. Good.

Mats started a mental debate with himself over whether he should wrap it or not. If he wrapped it, Benni’s expectations would be higher and he might be disappointed when he saw what it was. But if he didn’t wrap it, Benni might think he was lazy and lame. Which he was, arguably.

Mats decided that he wasn’t going to wrap it. _All for the better_.

He hoped the scarf would match Benni’s eyes. What color were Benni’s eyes again? Hazel. They were hazel. Mats noted that hazel was his favorite color.

Mats stopped by the McDonald’s at the food court and picked up a chicken wrap and a Coke before he left the mall, his bag containing Benni’s scarf safely around his wrist as he ate and headed for the bank.

 _How the fuck do you get money out of the bank,_ Mats wondered, stuffing his chicken wrap into his mouth. _This shit has way too much mayonnaise_. He’d never taken money out of the bank before.

He crumpled up the wrapper to his wrap, stuffed it in an overflowing trash can on the sidewalk, then sipped on his Coke as he pulled open the door to the bank he knew managed his money. He checked for Benni’s scarf before he entered. It gave him a little confidence.

He walked up to the teller. “Hi,” he said, leaning against the counter.

“Good afternoon, sir. Would you like to make a withdrawal or a deposit today?”

“I need money,” Mats told him. “I have to pay back my neighbor for something.”

“Okay, I’m going to need you to fill out this slip with your bank number and the amount you wish to withdraw. I also need to see your I.D.” The teller slid a small sheet of paper in front of Mats with lots of blocks for numbers.

Mats set down his Coke on the counter; condensation leaked down the sides and left a pool of liquid on the counter. He frowned and chewed the inside of his mouth, studying the slip.

When he was finished, he looked up. “The hell is this?”

The teller nearly rolled his eyes, sounding very irritated while answering. “It’s a withdrawal slip. You need to fill it out in order to take out money from your account.”

Mats’ eyes widened. “But…”

“Fill out the slip and show me your I.D. or I can’t help you, sir,” the teller said in a clipped tone.

“I don’t have a pen!” Mats exclaimed accusatively.

The teller pushed a pen over to Mats, who made a face before picking it up and getting to work on the slip.

He filled out his name. _Mats Julian Hummels_. Then he thought about how much he wanted to take out. Hm. How much money had he borrowed from Julian? He did a quick calculation in his head and settled on $482. Very carefully, Mats put the numbers in their correct boxes. Lastly, he pulled out his driver’s license from his pocket and lay it atop the slip, then brushed his hands together and announced that he was finished.

“I still need your account number, Mr. Hummels.”

“How the fuck am I supposed to know that?!” Mats said indignantly. Why was this man trying to complicate things? Here he was, trying to do the right thing, and everyone was making it hard for him. It was like the world didn’t want Mats Hummels to do the right thing.

“I’m sorry, sir. I can’t help you unless I have your account number.”

“Then look it up! You have my name, look it up!” Mats shot, gesturing wildly.

“I can’t do that for you, Mr. Hummels. I’m sorry. I’m going to have to ask you to leave, now,” the man responded, unfazed by Mats’ tantrum.

“You have to! You have to give me my money, I need it!” Mats shouted. He was not going to walk away without enough money for Julian. He needed to do it to make Benni happy.

“Please leave, Mr. Hummels, or I’ll have you escorted out.”

“Fuck you!” Mats yelled, shoving his license back in his pocket. “I hate you! All you people ever do is make my life difficult!” Then he knocked over his drink, spilling it all over the counter and the teller’s shirt and keyboard and ran out of the bank, his head spinning round and round and his heart pounding against his ribcage and he ran all the way to his truck just to be sure the teller wasn’t coming after him.

Once he was by his truck, he closed his eyes and took a few breaths of fresh air to calm himself. _It’s okay. I can go home, find my account number, then come back and get the money. I can still make Benni proud._.

Before he drove off, he checked his shopping bag for Benni’s scarf. It was still there. And he hadn’t splattered any Coke on it. Good.

\-----

When the lunch bell rang, Benedikt promptly took two more capsules, giving him several more hours of not feeling like crap.

At lunch, Benedikt sat with Manuel, Thomas (who sat himself as far from Manuel as possible), Bastian, Lukas, Mesut, and a few other guys who normally inhabited the lunch table. But Benedikt wasn’t particularly hungry, and all he wanted to do was talk to Manuel about Mats without being surrounded by a bunch of juveniles throwing food at each other and telling ‘yo mama’ jokes (“Yo mama so ugly that she won a beauty contest because everyone else in the room died!” exclaimed Thomas, hardly able to finish his ‘joke’ because he broke down into hysterical laughter midway through it).

Benedikt made a mental note to find a new lunch table as soon as possible.

Meanwhile, Manuel was dipping goldfish in Nutella and eating them, appearing to be very spaced out, not speaking, raising an eyebrow whenever a new insult was created. He and Benedikt had met briefly this morning so he could give Benedikt his backpack and poster board, but they hadn’t had time to talk. He was dying to know what had happened after Benedikt left Julian’s last night.

“By, the way Manu,” Benedikt said loudly over the ruckus, giving Thomas a strange look as he nearly fell off his chair in laughter (Lukas caught him before he landed flat on his butt), “Ms. McGrady took my phone. I’m not gonna have it this weekend.” He went on to explain why he’d had it taken away, which was a mistake because he had to mention that he’d given Mats his number.

Manuel opened his mouth and a goldfish fell out onto the floor. “ _What?!_ Why? What are you trying to do?”

Benedikt rolled his eyes up to the ceiling. This was going to be a long, hard story to tell. “Let’s go outside, I don’t feel like yelling over this crowd for half an hour,” he practically shouted, giving a quick gesture to their rowdy tablemates.

Manuel nodded his agreement and they gathered their things to leave. Benedikt rolled his eyes as a glob of applesauce went flying across the table. Their departure went unnoticed.

Benedikt and Manuel resettled outside on the football field, where students technically were not allowed to eat lunch but everyone did it anyway. Or at least, the ones who could not stand the cafeteria. Thankfully, it was much warmer than yesterday; the temperature seemed to have jumped seasons. It was nice outside on the football field. The field was one of the few grass fields left in the county, the rest having switched to synthetic, and it was surrounded by trees. The sun had been kind enough to make an appearance today as well, warming the grass as students sat in groups and ate their lunches, chatting, their voices eaten away by the open air so it was a great place to hold a private conversation.

And Benedikt told Manuel everything. He left out the part about bawling in front of Mats' little sister, though. And the part about falling asleep in Mats’ bed. And the part about waking up and making out in Mats’ truck and driving to 7-11. But everything else, he told Manuel. He was relieved he'd only need to tell this story one, too, because Manuel would more than likely pass it on to Julian.

“His sister’s probably going to turn out exactly like him,” Manuel said intelligently, shaking his head.

“I don’t think so. She’s clever,” Benedikt returned. “Mats is too, I guess. He’s just…” He trailed off and the word to describe Mats hung in the air between them, unspoken but known to them both. “He’s just been clever enough to figure out that he doesn’t have to do shit and everyone will expect him not to do shit so he breezes through life not doing shit.”

“Maybe they’ll hire you to babysit her every Thursday now,” Manuel joked, ignoring Benedikt’s insight on Mats.

“I wouldn’t mind. I liked her,” said Benedikt offhandedly before continuing with his theory on Mats. “What Mats doesn’t realize though is that it’s actually easier to just do what you have to do instead of going to all that effort to avoid it. It’s like using Sparknotes...just read the book, man. Either way, you have to read something.”

Manuel leaned back on his arms. “I hate to say this Benni, but I really don’t care about Mats’ philosophical challenges. I just want to know when he plans on paying Julian back because I am about to report him. I can’t believe we haven’t already done it, I feel so guilty.”

Benedikt thought Manuel sounded like a kindergartner who couldn’t wait to tattle on the kid throwing mulch at everyone else on the playground.

He knew Manuel was right, though; it really was wrong not to report what they knew immediately considering this had been going on for so long and involved threats and large amounts of money. But he also felt that if Mats didn’t have a chance to take the responsibility for himself, then he’d get away with it again and never would learn to accept the consequences of his own decisions.

“He will,” Benedikt said, almost defensively, eyes locked on Manuel. “I promise. Just let him do it.”

Manuel shrugged. “We’ll see. I’ll give him a week to cough up. After that...” He whistled and gestured over his shoulder. Benedikt just stared at him.

Manuel could be a bit shallow at times, but he really was a great friend.

So Benedikt took Manuel’s timeframe as a challenge. He now had a week to teach Mats Hummels how to be a person. That was plenty of time. Getting Mats to give back the money, which was all Manuel was interested in, was the easy part. The hard part would be getting Mats to admit his remorse. Benedikt knew it was there. It had to be. Mats just needed to find it. Benedikt could help with that.

\-----

The first thing Mats did when he got home was open his parents’ file cabinet and he found the file labelled ‘Mats’. He leafed through all the papers, looking for anything with his bank’s logo on it. He didn’t find anything, so he swore and shoved the file back into the cabinet messily, bending important paperwork and not even putting it back in the right place.

Still kneeling on the floor next to the cabinet, Mats called his mom at work, who sounded surprised to hear from him.

“I need my bank account number,” Mats said impatiently.

She sounded like she was busy with something at work, with people talking in the background. “Did you keep your bank statement that came in the mail last week? I don’t know your account number off the top of my head, but you can check your statement.”

Mats felt his mouth becoming dry. He threw away all his bank statements without even looking at them because he didn’t care how much money he had in his bank. It was useless if it wasn’t cash. His grandparents were always putting more money in there for him, anyway, so he had nothing to worry about.

“I got rid of the statement,” Mats said irritably. “I didn’t know I was supposed to keep it. I need to get money out of the bank. I have to get it today!”

Mats was angry. This wasn’t his fault, it was anyone’s fault but his and he was mad everyone for ruining this for him.

“I’m sorry, Mats,” his mom answered distractedly. “I’ll help you when I get home...if you’re at home, can you pick up Kira from school at 3:30?”

“Why can’t she just go to extended day? I have to go to my friend’s house to work on a project for school,” Mats lied, sounding as if his mom had just asked him to eat glass.

“She spends too much time there and it’d be nice if you could pay her some attention, she’s upset lately because of how much you ignore her… But if you’re working on a project, that’s good. I really have to go, Mats. I’ll be home at around 6 today, I’ll help you with your bank number then.”

She knew deep down that there was no chance her son was really working on a school project. But there was always hope.

Mats said goodbye to his mother as kindly as he could then hung up and flung his phone across the room. It hit a window and clattered to the floor. He hoped it was broken. He didn’t need it, anyway. Benedikt wasn’t going to text him back. Benedikt had probably given him a fake number. Benedikt probably hated Mats.

His breathing was ragged as he stormed up to his room. His body felt out of control, like there were strange electrical currents running through his arms and legs and he was dizzy.

He couldn’t remember ever feeling this angry before. It was all Benedikt’s fault. Benedikt had fucked with his head and pressured him into doing this. Mats didn’t want to change, he didn’t want to do this, it was too hard.

He kicked his door open and picked up his shopping bag from the department store. He checked to make sure Benni’s scarf was still in there. It was. Good.

He took it out of the bag and ran the soft, royal blue material over his hands. It was calming, and his heart rate slowed a little bit. Benni would’ve really liked this scarf. Mats knew he would have.

So he found a pair of scissors and ripped it up until it was nothing more than an erratic pile of woolly blue shreds. When he was finished with that, he began cutting off chunks of his hair and soon there was a scattering of dark curls amidst the blue material. It was hideous, the pile was fucking hideous and Mats hated it. It was a pile of everything he hated. And now he could just sweep it up and throw it in the trash can along with his bank statements.

 _All for the better_.

\-----

“Benedikt!” his dad was yelling at him from downstairs.

“Whaaaaaat?” Benedikt yelled back.

There was a lot of yelling that took place from one end of the house to the other in the Höwedes household.

“Come downstairs, please!” his dad yelled.

“Coming!” Benedikt yelled back. He rolled over in his bed and covered his head with a pillow, making no immediate plans to go downstairs.

After dinner, Benedikt had gone straight upstairs and climbed into bed. He’d been waiting for this moment all day; it seemed like from the moment he met Mats in the library yesterday up until this point had all been one long fantastic nightmare. He was so sleep deprived, he wasn’t even sure if he was actually awake and if all these things were really happening or not. His fever, which was slowly returning as the Tylenol wore off, was not helping much.

He’d been drifting in and out of sleep, tossing and turning, unable to get comfortable because he felt so out of place trying to fall asleep while the sun was still going down. He was tired as hell, but it was simply no use. Maybe he should just go downstairs and see what his dad had to say.

“Benedikt! Now!” he heard his dad shouting up the staircase.

“I’m coming…” Benedikt grumbled to himself as he rolled out of bed and dragged himself downstairs, his eyes and head aching immensely with all the movement.

Benedikt found his dad in his office, typing away on his computer and looking very stressed out with work papers spread helter-skelter all over his desk. Benedikt wandered over next to him and started fiddling with some piles, tucking them in so they were neat and then putting them back on the desk.

“You’re grounded,” his dad stated, not drawing his eyes away from his screen.

“Why?” Benedikt asked coolly, opening and closing a binder clip he’d found.

“You didn’t come home last night, didn’t tell your mom where you were and didn’t answer her phone calls,” said his dad slickly. Type. Type. Type.

“Okay,” Benedikt said, devoting all his attention to the binder clip. He could accept that. He just wished his dad would look at him. No one in his family ever looked at each other. They were hardly ever in the same room.

“You may not use your phone or go anywhere this weekend.” Backspace. Click.

Benedikt shrugged. “I already got my phone taken at school today.”

His dad finally looked up at this remark, taking off his reading glasses, noting the feverish flush on his son’s cheeks but choosing to disregard it. “And why’s that?”

“I had it out after I finished taking my test,” Benedikt said squarely, meeting his dad’s eyes before the latter huffed in disappointment, rolling his eyes and returning to his work.

That pissed Benedikt off. He was tired of this. He and his mom and dad acted like a unit, not a family. He was surprised his parents weren’t divorced. He could tell they didn’t love each other.

“Alright, dad. I enjoyed this conversation very much. See you tomorrow at breakfast,” Benedikt said sarcastically, throwing aside the binder clip. Then he spun on his heel, ready to crash back into bed and sleep until nothing was complicated anymore.

“Load the dishwasher before you go and lock yourself upstairs again, Benedikt!” his dad called as he was halfway across the hall.

“No!” Benedikt yelled back. Then he climbed the stairs as quickly as his pounding head would allow him to, locked the door to his bedroom and leaped into bed.

His dad didn’t follow him or nag him about the dishwasher any more. No surprise there.

Benedikt lay still in his bed, eyes wide open, staring out his window as the sky grew dark and his forehead got hotter and hotter.


	12. Chat Confessions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A Facebook chat happens between Mats and Benedikt.

As the night went on, Benedikt’s condition steadily worsened. By eleven o’clock, he was running to the bathroom every few minutes and eventually decided to just stay in there, hunched over the toilet waiting for this horrible phase to pass.

Just as Benedikt was emptying his stomach for the umpteenth time, the door to the bathroom glided open and his dad stood in the doorway, still dressed in his work clothes with his reading glasses perched atop his head.

Benedikt looked at him pitifully, his mouth still trembling, wishing his dad would just go away.

“I’m going to the grocery store to pick up some bread. Do you want a soda?” he asked robotically.

_Why are you getting bread at eleven o’clock on a Friday night? Can’t it wait till tomorrow?_

_Why are you still working?_

_Why don’t you ever act like you love me?_

“I don’t care. It probably won’t help.”

His dad nodded curtly before stepping away. He switched on the fan on the way out; he did feel for Benedikt, but it was hard to concentrate on his work when all he could hear was retching every five minutes. Then he closed the door, creating yet another barrier between himself and his only son.

Mr. Höwedes didn’t buy any bread at the store; they had plenty in the freezer. But he did pick up a few things that might help Benedikt’s stomach. He left them on Benedikt’s bed while Benedikt was brushing his teeth before retreating back to his office, wondering how his family got to be so rigid.

\-----

Even though Benedikt was grounded, he still had an old iPod touch that his parents had forgotten about so he powered it on and opened up Facebook, unable to sleep.

After returning to his room, he’d found a lemon-lime soda and some Tums on his bed. He chewed a few Tums and sipped on the soda, praying that it would stay down. Miraculously, it did, and Benedikt could finally get back in bed. He still couldn’t sleep, though. He had too much on his mind.

He opened the search bar in Facebook and typed in ‘Mats Hu-’ before the desired profile popped up as a suggestion and he pressed it.

Surprisingly, he and Mats were already Facebook friends.

They had probably friended each other back in middle school when the number of Facebook friends you had was deadly important to your social status so you friended everybody you’d ever heard of once and their mom.

His fingers hesitated as he punched in a message. His thumb hovered over the send button as he tried to convince himself to just close his eyes and press it. He allowed his thumb to drop a fraction of an inch and his heart rate increased infinitely.

He checked to make sure it hadn’t sent. It hadn’t. Good.

Then Benedikt furrowed his eyebrows together and pressed the button.

He read over what he sent to make sure it didn’t sound stupid. _Are you awake?_ He decided that it was fine. Although maybe he shouldn’t have capitalized the ‘a’ or should have replaced ‘you’ with ‘u’ so he didn’t seem as stuck up --

_Mats is typing…_

Benedikt flipped his iPod over and pressed the screen down into his mattress so he couldn’t see it. Shit shit shit shit shit shit shit shit shit shit --

*Ding*

Benedikt picked up his iPod again, trying to pretend that he wasn’t excited and that his stomach was not suddenly swirling all around in circles again.

_Mats Hummels: Yes and i cut all my hair off_

_Benedikt Höwedes: Uh what?_

_M: It wasnt my fault it was an accident. wanna see it? Its really ugly_

_B: Yes. And how was it not your fault if you’re the one who cut your hair?_

_Mats Hummels attached a photo._

Benedikt touched the image to make it bigger.

And there was Mats, with the most ‘so fucking done with everything’ expression on his face, glaring into the front facing camera with his hair all different lengths in different places and sticking out all over the place.

He somehow still managed to look unbelievably attractive.

And then Benedikt was laughing. He clutched his pillow to his stomach, laughing so hard he was afraid he’d start vomiting again and his dad would come bursting into the room to ensure that he really had left his son Tums and not some illegal substance that had somehow crossed the border.

Mats Hummels was really something.

When Benedikt regained some control over himself, he saw that he had another message from Mats.

_M: well what do you think? should i open a hair salon?_

_B: Maybe not_

_M: Youre no fun._

_B: I’m still sick. I just spent the last 2 hours puking my guts up. THAT wasn’t very fun_

_M: ew_

_M: :(((((( *hugs*_

All of a sudden, Benedikt didn’t feel very sick anymore. But he did feel sort of light, like he was floating out of bed.

_B: You didn’t answer my question_

_M: Which was what?_

_B: Why wasn’t it your fault? Did Jesus fly down open your window make you cut your hair then leave?_

_M: yes_

_B: oh_

_M: No that’s not really what happened_

_B: What happened then?_

_M: I dont want to talk about it_

_B: Okay, what do you want to talk about then?_

_M: I don’t konw youre the one who messaged me_

Ouch. That stung.

_B: Sorry. I just couldn’t sleep_

_M: Its okay I like talking to you._

_M: Hey do you want to sneak out with me? I can come pick u up_

_B: I would but I can’t, I’m already grounded_

_M: :((((_

_M: Do you wanna smoke tomorrow?_

_B: ……...no. I just told you I was grounded. Plus I don’t want to smoke_

_B: Whatever happened to your buddy Erik?_

_M: He’s annoying. Do you want to go see a movie tomorrow?_

_B: Mats. I. Am. GROUNDED. I can’t go anywhere. Sorry_

_M: Well can i come to ur house?_

_B: Uhhhhh probably not. Sorry :( Parents have no chill_

_M: Tell them we have to work on the project. Because its due on monday ya know_

_B: I’ll try. Otherwise I can just do it myself_

_B: Hey sorry I didn’t text you back today, I was reading it in precalc and Ms. Mcgrady took my phone so I now have no phone_

_M: It’s okay_

Benedikt couldn’t think of anything to say to that, so he scrolled back to the top of their conversation. He felt odd, like he wasn’t quite awake or asleep but somewhere in between. He couldn’t believe he was having a somewhat-normal conversation with Mats Hummels. As he reread their messages once then twice, he realized he didn’t quite know what Mats was talking about.

And then he thought back on the last 24 hours and realized that he didn’t really understand anything about Mats Hummels.

Who was Mats Hummels? How did he manage to burn his arm? What did Mats Hummels spend his time doing? Why had he seemed so interested in Benedikt last night? Why didn’t he want to discuss the reason the cut his hair? And, most importantly, why, _why_ , was Benedikt falling for him so hard?

Benedikt heard the ding of a new message. Surprised, he scrolled back to the bottom of the screen and for some reason, Mats’ latest message made Benedikt feel a little sorry for him.

_M: Benni?_

Benedikt stared at his name on the screen. Much to his shame, he was enjoying torturing Mats by taking his time to respond. He wanted Mats to send him another message. He wanted Mats to want him as much as Benedikt wanted Mats.

‘ _Mats is typing…_ ’ flashed on and off the screen. Benedikt guessed he was having a hard time deciding what to say. He traced circles on his palm as Mats struggled, waiting for him to say what he was trying to say.

_M: I need to tell you something_

Benedikt’s stomach lurched unpleasantly.

_B: What’s that? You can tell me anything, I’m listening_

Mats typed for a long time after that and Benedikt’s eyelids were starting to droop. He was drifting off, the screen fluttered in and out of focus and Mats was still typing…

Finally, a large block of text popped up on the screen and Benedikt’s eyes flew open, his mind instantly sharp again.

_Mats Hummels: Okay I know this isn’t something I should say on facebook or over text but I’m a coward so I would never say it to your face. I just want to say that I really like you and I know I’m complete shit and I don’t deserve you or anything you’ve tried to do for me. Stop trying to change me Benni stop trying to help me because this is the kind of person I am, nothing caused it nothing happened, people always try to find out what caused this but NOTHING did. this is just what I’m like, I am a shitty person, always have been and I enjoy being this way. I hurt people before they can hurt me and it’s better that way, call it sadism or whatever the fuck u want. I’d be better off dead, I’m never going to change I don’t want to and I’m no use to anyone, I don’t even want to be here so what’s the point why the fuck do I have to be here? I’m horrible to my sister I’m horrible to you, i like you so much though Benni, I always have since I’ve known who you are because youre the kind of person I wish I could be. You are nice and caring and you work hard and you always do the right thing and you’re so brave. you’re so beautiful too, I want to see you naked. Thats all I have to say i am going to bed goodnight I love you._

The pressure that had built up between Benedikt’s eyes was unbearable and his heart was pumping blood so fast that he thought he saw red. For one wild moment, Benedikt regretted getting rid of the inhaler he’d had to use when he was very small before he outgrew it.

_Benedikt Höwedes: Mats wait_

What did Mats think he was doing?

_B: Mats, you need to answer me or I will walk to your house and come find you_

_M: I’ll just run away then lol_

_B: It’s not funny. You are such a brat. Grow up_

_M: Okay geez I’m answering what is it_

_B: That message you just sent me???_

_M: Yeah what about it there’s nothing to discuss_

_B: Yes there is. There is a lot to discuss and really Mats I don’t know where to start you’re scaring me_

_B: If you’re going to be a dick though then I can’t talk to you right now. I cannot believe what you just said to me_

_M: i dont even want to fucking talk to you I thought i made that clear so go ahead and leave_

_B: If that’s how you feel. Goodnight Mats, I am done with you_

_M: go fuck yourself i thought you were going to help me_

Benedikt had to bite his tongue to stop himself from screaming in frustration and he bit it so hard that it started bleeding. He powered off his iPod and buried it under his covers, shoving it towards the foot of his bed and hoping it would disappear overnight. He wished he’d never turned it on in the first place, he wished he could go back in time if only one hour and keep his and Mats’ chat history nonexistent. He wished he’d never been assigned to work with Mats on this stupid project and he hated Mr. Löw with a burning passion for pairing them together. He held a pillow tightly over his head and tried to block out everything from coming in and squeeze out everything that was already in there. His entire body ached from being sick and from not sleeping and from Mats and physical exhaustion was the sole factor that allowed him to fall asleep that night.

\-----

 

\-----

One of Marco and Mario’s favorite things to do was buy tickets for one movie, watch it, then stay in the theater and watch the next one without paying for it.

Usually the second movie sucked. But it was still fun. It was worth the guilt that came along with it.

They always ordered a bucket of popcorn and shared it. They ordered individual candies, though, because Mario loved Skittles but Marco preferred chocolates. Marco always ended up snagging some of Mario’s Skittles anyway, tossing them theatrically into his mouth and sniggering when he caught Mario’s scowl. Marco then would lean over and kiss the other boy’s ear, promising Mario he’d make it up to him tonight.

On Saturday, two familiar faces wandered into the theater while the It Couple waited in between movies.

Thomas was following about two feet behind Manuel, scampering along like a puppy who had paws too big for its body. Manuel was scanning the theater, looking for somewhere to sit.

Marco lifted his hand to wave them over since there were a few empty seats around them, but Mario pressed his boyfriend's arm back down into his lap.

“We’re not friends with them,” Mario hissed importantly.

Marco shrugged. “So? We still know them. And it looks like they’re having trouble…”

Marco didn’t even need to finish his sentence because just as he and Mario turned to their classmates, Thomas rather characteristically tripped up the steps and spilled all the popcorn he was carrying (why Manuel would entrust Thomas with the popcorn was a mystery), landing on top of the now empty bucket and flattening it.

Mario stifled a laugh. Typical Thomas Müller. Marco shushed him.

Now, Manuel had turned around and was pulling Thomas back to his feet. He began scooping the soiled popcorn back into the bucket. Thomas hung his head and watched Manuel, his ears an extraordinary shade of crimson as he felt the eyes of everyone who’d been fortunate enough to witness his misfortune upon him.

After Manuel finished cleaning up, he led Thomas to the closest seats possible to avoid any more incidents, then tucked the clumsy brunet in his arm and said something to him as they leaned into each other. Finally, Manuel extracted himself and retraced his steps out of the theater, bucket in hands, probably to utilize one of their bottomless popcorn refills. Thomas chewed on his knuckles in the meantime.

 _How cute,_ thought Mario fondly.

Marco smiled.


	13. The Hummels Family

Mats woke up on Saturday to the smell of bacon.

He’d fallen asleep with his laptop on his lap, sending message after message after message to Benni telling him that he was sorry and that he was ready to talk and to please come back. But Benni never came back.

In the light of the day, he was embarrassed. He didn’t even want to think about what he’d confessed last night to Benni he was so embarrassed, so he turned off his laptop and went downstairs in search of a distraction.

His mom was in the kitchen, frying eggs and bacon and there was Kira, sitting in the same chair that Benni -- sitting at the kitchen table in her softball outfit waiting to be given her plate.

“Good morning, mom,” said Mats cheerfully. “Kira’s got a game this morning?”

Mrs. Hummels turned around, looking at her son suspiciously. Mats was not a morning person. Nor was he an afternoon or an evening person for that matter, so this was especially strange.

She wasn’t going to complain, though. If Mats was going to be pleasant and polite then she’d be damned. “Yep, she does. Do you want to come with?”

 _Perfect_ , thought Mats. There was nothing better than watching a bunch of six and seven year old girls trying to play softball to distract him from haunting thoughts of Benedikt. “Sure, I’ll come. Can you sice me with some of that bacon?” He pulled out two chairs, one for his ass and one for his feet, and made himself comfortable. Kira glared at him. Mats stuck his tongue out at her. Kira stuck her tongue out back.

“Your hair looks stupid,” Kira chirped.

“You’re stupid,” Mats said back as Silver trotted into the kitchen and plopped down beside him. Mats let down one of his legs so he could pet her with his foot.

“I know you are, but what am I?” said Kira, smiling smugly at him.

Mrs. Hummels rolled her eyes and flipped over the bacon. It looked ready, so she turned off the stove.

“Stupid,” Mats repeated, examining his fingernails as if he were way too cool to be arguing with his six year old sister.

“I know you are but what am I?”

“ _I know you are but what am I?_ ” Mats mocked her in a high pitched voice.

“ _Mats._ ” Mrs. Hummels interrupted sharply.

Kira narrowed her eyes. She hated when Mats copied her. She racked her brains, searching for the worst name she knew of to call her brother. While she was thinking, Mrs. Hummels brought over two plates of breakfast, one for Mats and one for Kira.

“Thanks mommy!” Kira said.

“Yeah, thanks mommy!” Mats echoed, reaching for the ketchup to pile on top of his eggs.

“Eat your eggs too, sweetie, not just your bacon,” Mrs. Hummels smiled at her daughter. Then she gave Mats a ‘be nice to your sister or else’ look before leaving the kitchen to get ready in the bathroom.

“So, Kira, who’s the worst person on your team?” Mats asked once their mom was gone, using his fork to distribute the ketchup.

Kira frowned as she picked up a piece of bacon with her small hand. “No one. We’re all good.”

Mats took a large forkful of his eggs and talked while he chewed. “It’s probably you then. You’re probably the worst if you can’t figure out who else it is. I bet you stink.” He shrugged, tossing a strip of bacon into his mouth.

“NOOB!” Kira shouted with as much ferocity as she could. “You’re a noob Matsi! NOOB!”

Mats sputtered, spitting bits of egg everywhere as he laughed at his sister. Kira clenched her fists.

“ _Noob?!_ ” Mats exclaimed. “That’s not even close to a bad word, Kira. Nice try.” Then he laughed some more, snorting as he tried to take another bite.

“What is a bad word then?” Kira asked her brother curiously.

Mats scratched his chin, pretending to think very hard. “Hmmm...I could tell you a bad word, or a really, _really_ bad word. Which do you want?”

Kira grinned mischievously. “I want to know the really, _really_ bad word!”

Mats leaned forward, lowering his voice as if this were a top secret mission. “Okay...but you can’t tell _anyone_. This is such a bad word that you can go to _jail_ for saying it…”

Kira’s eyes widened and she locked her mouth with a key and threw it away.

“Ready?” Mats asked.

Kira nodded excitedly, looking ecstatic that her big brother was being nice to her for once and also fearful that she was about to learn the worst word on the planet.

Mats gestured for Kira to lean closer and she did, allowing Mats to whisper the word into her ear.

Kira backed away and cupped her hands over her mouth to stifle a giggle, glowing with excitement. Mats winked, putting his finger to his lip to remind her to keep it a secret.

At that moment, their father chose to walk in from where he’d been reading the newspaper on the back porch with his coffee. Mr. Hummels was a tall, soft-spoken man was graying hair and a kind face. He smiled a genuine smile when he saw his children getting along, a rare occurrence. A gift, really.

“What kind of trouble are you two getting into?” he scolded them playfully.

“Nothing!” Kira assured him quickly, smiling a huge, innocent smile.

“Yeah, it’s nothing!” Mats backed up his sister. Mr. Hummels looked at them both suspiciously before he continued through the kitchen into the hall.

As soon as he was out of earshot, Kira burst into giggles and Mats held out his hand for a high-five which Kira enthusiastically accepted.

“Kira! Get your shoes on and come to the car, we’re going to be late!” called Mrs. Hummels.

“Wait, wait, I’m not even dressed,” Mats groaned, pushing his plate away and getting up.

“Hurry up!” Kira squealed happily, nearly tripping with excitement as she scrambled out of the kitchen. She was overjoyed that her big brother was coming to watch her game. She was going to prove to Mats that she did _not_ stink. She was going to hit a home run today and make him proud.

So Mats threw on some clothes and a snapback to cover up his awful self-appointed haircut, and the Hummels family piled into the car (Mats complained about not getting ‘shotgun’ even though he had ‘called it’), on their way to Kira’s softball game.

\-----

Though he’d rather die than admit it, Mats had enjoyed watching his sister’s softball game.

Kira was good. The way it worked was each kid would get three pitches from a coach to try and hit the ball and if they missed all three, then they’d get to hit it off a tee. Each time Kira went up to bat, she smashed the ball that was pitched to her and pranced around to at least third base while the girls in the field fumbled around with the ball, not knowing quite what to do with it as all the coaches and parents were screaming different instructions and it was quite overwhelming.

“Throw the ball to Coach Dave, Emily!” they would shout as poor Emily looked around at all the balding guys with sunglasses on the field, trying to figure out which one was Coach Dave.

Meanwhile, Kira was galloping from base to base, waving at Mats as she flew by him. “Hi, Matsi!” she called out.

Mats waved back.

When Kira made it all the way back to home plate (and all the parents and coaches were still yelling at Grace to give the ball back to Coach Mike), she continued running right off the field and straight into Mats’ arms, who kneeled down to hug her.

“Do you still think I stink?” Kira asked seriously, eyes wide as she tilted her chin up to see her brother after he had straightened up again.

Mats shook his head. “Nope, you proved me wrong, little bee. You are awesome. Now go back to your game, your team needs you since you’re the best player.” He smiled and patted her head, then nudged her back towards her team (which apparently was called the Purple Ponies, a name which Mats did not particularly envy).

Kira gloated at the nickname before trotting off. Mats never called her nice nicknames.

It was a good morning for everyone in the Hummels family.

\-----

On the way back home, Mr. and Mrs. Hummels agreed to stop at the diner for burgers and milkshakes.

"The diner sucks ass," Mats interjected from the backseat. "Let's go to KFC."

"Watch your language, please, Mats," Mrs. Hummels reminded him. "I don't want your sister to start saying those words at school."

"My bad," said Mats. He adjusted his snapback and remembered that he needed to go get his hair fixed today. Which in turn reminded him of Benedikt and Mats quickly shifted his focus back to the conversation going on in the car.

“I already know a bad word. Mats taught me it this morning!” Kira piped from her booster seat.

“Kira!” Mats exclaimed. “You weren’t supposed to tell anyone. Way to go.”

Kira scowled at him. “ _You’re_ the one who taught it to me.”

Mrs. Hummels turned around to watch them from the passenger seat. “What’s the word that Mats taught you, Kira?” she asked amusedly.

Mats shook his head quickly, his eyes wide, warning Kira not to speak a word. Meanwhile, Mr. Hummels was pretending to ignore them and focus on the road, but he was also waiting for Kira to spill, biting back a smile.

“POOPBALLS!” Kira yelled at the top of her lungs, which in turn made Mats scream in surprise and soon Kira was screaming along with him. And then the both of them fell into hysterics, Kira because she had just yelled the worst word on the planet and Mats because of the ‘what the hell did she just say’ look on his mom’s face.

Mr. Hummels swore and swerved to the side of the road, coming to a stop. “Get out of the car, Mats,” he groaned.

“No, please,” Mats choked through laughter. “Sorry...sorry…”

“ _Do. Not. Scream._ ” Mr. Hummels asserted as forcefully as he could, but it was difficult because the other three members of his family had evolved into a pack of wild coyotes and it sounded so ridiculous that he had to rest his forehead on the steering wheel and laugh, too.

It took a while for the Hummels family to get under control again, and none of them really knew what was so funny. Probably nothing at all, or their own insanity. It felt good to laugh, though.

Especially for Mats. For the first time since the day that project was assigned, he had completely forgotten about Benedikt Höwedes. It felt nice; Benni was too stressful. He made Mats question himself too much. However, it wasn’t too long before that blissful moment ended.

“Mats, when is your friend Benni going to come over again?” Kira asked innocently once Mr. Hummels had pulled back onto the road.

Mats’ heart skipped a beat. "Who?"

“Who’s Benni?” his mom asked.

“I hope he’s not a pothead,” his dad added helpfully. “You have too many pothead friends, Mats.”

 _I have lots of pothead friends but I don’t have any real friends,_ Mats thought pitifully. He realized, with a wave of pity, that Benedikt was the closest thing he had to a real friend.

Mrs. Hummels reminded her husband sternly that their daughter was in the car and not to use ‘drug slang’.

"What's a pothead?" Kira wanted to know.

"Someone who uses lots of drugs," explained Mats. "You can call your friends potheads if--"

“That means _you’re_ a pothead Matsi because you have that--”

“Your sister is right, Mats,” Mr. Hummels interrupted while Kira made her ‘I was right and you were wrong, Mats’ face. “I want to see you stop smoking so much weed and start making plans for your life. Don’t think I don’t know where you hide that stuff and I will not hesitate to throw it away,” he added proudly.

Meanwhile, Kira hummed quietly the tune to her favorite One Direction song, looking back and forth between her dad and her brother and Mrs. Hummels sighed.

“Dad, I haven’t smoked since Tuesday, it’s fine. Plus I don’t even have my pipe anymore. I sold it to Marco and he hasn’t given it back,” Mats reasoned.

“O-kay, so who’s Benni? Have I met him? And how does Kira know him?” Mrs. Hummels slipped into the conversation and reverted the subject back, the ‘how does Kira know him’ a code phrase for ‘I told you not to bring your friends around Kira, Mats’.

“He’s Matsi’s friend. He’s really nice, he read to me and made me lasagna. Well, I wanted mac and cheese but he spilled it by accident, it was okay though!” Kira explained excitedly.

Mats sighed heavily and leaned back in his chair, rubbing his forehead. There was no point in resisting this conversation now. His parents were not going to let the matter drop. So he grudgingly launched into his best but limited explanation of who Benedikt Höwedes was, Kira chiming in every now and then much to Mats’ irritation because it was usually something that Mats hoped wouldn’t need to be revealed. Some of Kira’s insight, however, was news to Mats, particularly the mac and cheese incident in its full blown detail.

When Kira shared that story, Mats felt nervous sweat prickling his armpits and his ears burning in shame. His mouth was all of a sudden very dry, too.

He normally loved the diner’s burgers and milkshakes, but today it was like chewing carpet. He forced it all down though so everything would appear to be A-okay even though it wasn’t.

\-----

Benedikt woke up at around one in the afternoon, feeling refreshed. His throat was sore and his nose a bit stuffed up, but other than that he felt good. He lay in bed, trying to remember what could have possibly made him so miserable last night. He was also hungry for the first time since Thursday evening.

There was no shouting-from-one-end-of-the-house-to-the-other conversation taking place downstairs, meaning either one or both of his parents had left the house (He thought it was unfair how his parents just disappeared without telling him while he was grounded for doing the same thing).

Today was going to be a good day. Benedikt knew it would be. It was Saturday. He had auditions for the district’s high school honors choir tonight. He felt confident that he was going to make it again this year.

But upon remembering that he’d just woken up with a stuffy nose, he groaned. He would probably sound more like a parrot attempting to sing.

Just as Benedikt was experimenting quietly with a short melody to evaluate how bad it was, it suddenly occurred to him that he also needed to finish the chemistry project this weekend, seeing as presentations were on Monday. Which, in turn, pleasantly reminded him of Mats Hummels.

The Facebook chat last night.

Great.

Benedikt rolled over and tried to fall back asleep, but it was no use. He’d already slept his heart out. Plus, he was hungry as hell. He’d emptied his stomach out clean last night.

Heaving a sigh, he swung his legs over the side of his bed and sat up. Then, yawning, he headed downstairs in search of food. He could eat something and work on the project at the same time, hopefully finish it in an hour, then find something to distract himself from Mats Hummels until it was time to leave for tryouts.

As Benedikt fished through the cabinets for a cereal that wasn’t rabbit food, he realized how lonely and empty the house felt. Not only because his parents had run off somewhere, probably to the office to ‘check on things’ (although they weren’t exactly the best company when they were here), not only because it was a dead time in the middle of the day, but there was something else too. Something felt...wrong.

Benedikt bit his cheek as he pulled out the Frosted Flakes. Maybe he could invite Manuel or someone over. Keep him company. He needed to find a ride to the tryouts, too, because he doubted his parents remembered or would be home in time for him to remind them. He doubted they even cared that much.

So much for being grounded.

Benedikt set the Frosted Flakes down and returned upstairs to dig his iPod out from under his covers. He powered it on and tucked it in the pocket of his hoodie while he descended the stairs again.

Just as he was pouring milk into his cereal bowl, he felt a series of vibrations against his stomach and nearly dumped the entire carton over the counter.

It hadn’t occurred to him that Mats could, and probably would, have kept messaging the hell out of him when he failed to respond. Benedikt grimaced, not really wanting to find out what those messages were though he already had a pretty good guess. Probably a lot of half-hearted insults utilising the word ‘fuck’ quite frequently.

He sat down at the table with his cereal, eating it more and more slowly as guilt began to consume him. The words of Mats’ confession flashed through his mind, the shame of how unsympathetic he’d been with his response.

_’You are such a brat. Grow up.’_

_‘I thought you were going to help me.’_

Yes, he had been exhausted and felt like crap and it had been late. But that was no excuse for ignoring the last-ditch cry for help Mats was so obviously trying to get out.

Benedikt’s spoon clattered against the side of his bowl as he stopped eating altogether. He’d lost his appetite.

What could he do now? He could respond to Mats properly and maybe Mats would be willing to talk about it. Or he could ignore Mats and forget about him; he’d simply be following Mats’ orders to leave him alone and stop trying to help him. But that’s not what Mats really wanted, and that’s not what Benedikt wanted either. Slightly rueful, he thought of the crude remark Mats had made about seeing him naked and that he was beautiful and brave and he clung to those small remarks amidst Mats' self-hatred like a lifeline. He desperately wanted them to be the truth, he needed Mats to need him. He thought of Mats’ soft, sweet lips crashing against his own and Mats’ body so close to his as they slept. Benedikt no longer felt ashamed or regretful when he remembered those moments; he wanted more of them. He wanted Mats to be his, and he would battle Mats’ demons at their very worst if he could get Mats at his best.

Benedikt thought of the family photos he’d briefly seen on the walls at Mats’ house: Mr. and Mrs. Hummels, Mats, and Kira, some of the pictures extending to grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins and friends at the beach, hiking, celebrating Christmas, at the theme park… He remembered there was one little cousin in a few of the pictures who looked to be about the same age as Mats (their similar looks could’ve had Benedikt mistaken that they were brothers if he did not already know Mats didn’t have a brother) and in the early pictures they would often be hugging each other and laughing until time passed and they stopped hugging and Benedikt lost track of which one he was. A pang of jealousy swept through Benedikt. There were no family pictures at Benedikt’s house. They hardly ever went on vacation, let alone visit extended family.

 _I was probably an accident_ , realized Benedikt.

He thought about the burns on Mats’ arm, how Mats had grown rigid when he’d touched them. Benedikt had a feeling Mats wasn’t telling him the truth about those burns. Why wouldn’t Mats tell Benedikt how he got burned? He hated to believe, didn’t want to believe that Mats had hurt himself. But now he had a reason to believe it after reading that message. Mats’ hatred for himself was unlimited, and it scared Benedikt. Mats could not be telling the truth when he said that there was nothing behind his behavior and self-hatred; there had to be a reason, even if it was not a single event. Something was bothering Mats and he was keeping it a secret, disguising himself. It made Benedikt sad. What _was_ it?

Benedikt swallowed thickly and realized he’d been staring at the same blank spot on the wall for a solid five minutes. A spot without a family picture. Benedikt rolled up his sleeves and examined his own arms; they had mostly healed from the scratches and were now nearly as blank as the walls in his house.

He needed to do something, and do it right now.

Trembling slightly, he pulled out his iPod from his pocket and pushed away his bowl of now-soggy Frosted Flakes. He didn’t even read Mats’ messages -- he simply opened Facebook and began typing, the text block that popped up pushing Mats’ messages out of view. Good.

Once he’d finished, read it over three times and sent it, his heart was beating so fast that he had to stand up and pace around the kitchen with his hands on his head to calm down. He wandered around the house for a bit, then returned to the kitchen with his poster board and a box of felt tip markers from his dad’s office. By the time he was back, Mats had not said anything back so Benedikt turned off notifications and flipped over his screen, not wanting to be constantly on edge waiting for a response and expecting to hear the tone signalizing a new Facebook message at any moment because he doubted Mats would respond anytime soon, if at all. He needed to get this damn project done and over with.

Benedikt ripped open the box of markers and pulled out a black one. He twirled it between his fingers, furrowing his eyebrows together and tapping his foot as he tried to think how to do this. It didn’t have to be fancy or creative, just something that could scrape him by with a C. So he ended up dividing the poster into six squares, writing ‘Lab Safety by Benedikt Höwedes: Period 7’ in the top and center one in capital letters. In the other five boxes, he would write one lab rule and illustrate it with a less-than-par drawing because Benedikt could sing but he could not draw.

Box #1 - Follow all directions. He drew a way-too-happy stick figure holding up a piece of paper labelled ‘Instructions’. Good enough.

Box #2 - Always keep on your safety goggles. He got the blue marker and drew two circles with diagonal lines sticking out of them, connected with a curved line. Volià. Safety goggles. For added effect, he sprinkled the box with some pink and purple drops, symbolizing dangerous chemicals (that probably would have never made it inside an 11th grade chemistry classroom in the first place) that could potentially blind/kill you.

After two boxes, Benedikt needed a little motivation so he picked up his iPod and turned on his favorite top classic rock hits of the '70s album (he had several and they all seemed to have different songs). He messaged Manuel (purposely not checking whether Mats had answered yet), asking if he wanted to come over and hang out.

_Manuel Neuer: Sorry I can’t right now :( Going to see a movie with Müller. When I get back though we could do something all together?_

Benedikt was disappointed, but smiled slightly at the idea of Manuel and Thomas seeing a movie together.

_Benedikt Höwedes: I see you two have made up... It’s fine, I have choir auditions tonight (plus I’m technically grounded but you know how that goes with my parents) anyway you two have a good time :)_

_Manuel Neuer: Good luck bro, I’ll tell Thomas you say hi lol_

_Benedikt Höwedes: If you can get him to stop talking for 2 seconds that is…_

After Manuel had to go, Benedikt messaged Lukas and Bastian, but both of them had a football match today. Mesut was visiting his grandparents. He asked little Julian, whom Benedikt now considered a friend, if he was around, but Julian wasn’t online and didn’t respond. He even messaged Miroslav, whom he was not particularly close with but Klose was a nice kid. It turned out, however, that Miroslav had a football game as well but suggested that he and Benedikt get together sometime next week, which Benedikt agreed should happen.

Benedikt was a little put off; he’d really wanted some company right now, but he understood the people had obligations and not _everyone_ was checking their phones and social media 24/7. He could survive a few hours by himself before he had tryouts (which he still needed to find a ride to -- hopefully one of his parents would be home soon or he’d have to harass Lukas and Bastian, who both had cars but probably wouldn’t want to drop him off at a random high school 30 minutes away for his tryouts then either wait there for three hours or pick him up afterwards. Maybe he’d just ask someone from choir for a last-minute ride, though he really should’ve planned this sooner).

As ‘Hold the Line (Love Isn't Always on Time)’ started playing, Benedikt picked up the markers again and got back to work. He was almost halfway done; he could finish in twenty minutes then go for a run or something before tryouts.

And he’d have to check if Mats had messaged him back, eventually.

Benedikt sighed as he finished safety rule #4 (do not mix any chemicals unless specifically instructed to do so, with a sloppy illustration of an explosion which was actually just a bunch of scribbles of random colors).

Finally. Safety rule #5. Use caution when handling flames.

Benedikt used the red, orange, and yellow markers to illustrate a stick figure being swallowed by tall, snakelike licks of fire. This stick figure, unlike the first one, looked rather unhappy with a single tear running down his circle-shaped face. It was by far Benedikt’s favorite drawing and the most realistic-looking. He was proud of it. He leaned back, holding his poster out in front of him to examine it as a whole.

There were two stick figures on the whole poster.

One was Benedikt. One was Mats.

Benedikt set down the poster again and got two more markers; the black and the brown. He took the brown one and gave the first, happy stick figure some straight lines for hair.

 _That’s me,_ he thought.

Then, ignoring the pressings of guilt, suddenly captivated by gore, he picked up the black marker and gave the stick figure in the fire a mop of dark curls.

 _That’s Mats,_ he thought somewhat maniacally.

Benedikt looked at what he’d done for a few seconds. Then, as if the marker was burning his skin, he flung it onto the table and pushed his chair back, leaving the poster and his iPod and all the markers out all over the table as he sped away from the kitchen as if it were a crime scene and into the bathroom for a shower.


	14. Flame Ignites

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mats reads a message and makes a surprise visit...

After his shower, Benedikt wiped the fog off the mirror with his hand and studied himself.

He looked awful.

His body was nowhere near up to par; he was pale and stringy and he decided the only reason his muscles were visible was because he had no body fat on account of his running. His dirty blond hair was a hot mess because he hadn’t combed it. His entire face had turned a rather unattractive shade of bright pink from not drinking enough water, concentrated around his freckled cheeks and despite all the sleep he’d gotten, his eyes were still tired and puffy and ugly.

Benedikt made a face at his reflection.

Mats was supposed to be the cold, nasty one.

But Benedikt was no angel, either.

It was just a stupid picture he’d drawn for a project, though. Just a picture. Just a picture…

\-----

When the Hummels family returned home after hearing the Macarena far too many times over the diner’s jukebox, Mats reported that he had some important errands to run.

“Are you going to go get your hair fixed?” his mom asked hopefully.

“Yes,” Mats said.

“Can you buy me a new Webkinz?” Kira asked, tugging on Mats’ arm. “Pleeeeeeeeeease?”

“Maybe,” Mats said, grabbing his keys and wallet (which was now equipped with his bank account number that his mom had helped him find). “If I see one I’ll pick it up.”

His dad walked into the room from the basement with an armful of paint cans. He was working in the garage. “If you’re headed out Mats, could you pick up some caulk for me?”

“Oh my god,” Mats groaned. “I’m leaving. Bye.”

“Don’t forget the caulk!”

“And my Webkinz!” trilled Kira.

“Oh and Mats, would you mind stopping by the grocery store and buying some ground turkey for dinner tonight?” his mom added.

“O-kaaaaaay,” Mats called back through gritted teeth.

“Lord have mercy,” he muttered once he was safely outside with the front door closed on his utterly clueless, high-maintenance yet loving family and was left alone and distraction-free for the first time that day.

It hit him like a punch in the gut.

He shouldn’t have sent that message. Not only was he beyond embarrassed, what with the ‘I want to see you naked’ and ‘I love you’ and all that (though he couldn’t say they were lies), but if he hadn’t sent it, Benedikt wouldn’t be mad at him and he may even have had a chance with Benni. Talk about turn-offs. No one wants to be associated with a self-pitying, depressing whiner.

That was the strategy Mats employed to ward people away from him before they could get too close.

So why had he tried it with Benni? He wanted Benni to be near him. He wanted Benni to be his. He craved Benni’s warmth and comfort and wanted him close. It didn’t make any sense. What was Mats trying to do? What was he _thinking_ when he’d sent that?

He wasn’t thinking at all. It had been late at night when emotions run raw and unprotected and there’s no daylight to filter the truth into social etiquette.

Mats ran his fingers through his hair and was surprised when most of it was gone. He kept forgetting about his spontaneous haircut. He sighed.

What had he done?

Slowly, he climbed into his truck and instinctively reached for his phone in his pocket the moment he sat down. He glanced at the screen and --

 _Facebook: Benedikt Höwedes sent you a message_.

One message. Just one. But it was still one more than Mats had been preparing himself for. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he’d hoped for a message, even expected one, but the more realistic part of him convinced him that the likelihood wasn’t high. Especially after Mats had harassed poor Benni with around 20 desperate ‘I’m sorry’s and ‘Please come back’s with no response. But Benedikt had indeed messaged him back at 1:46 PM, just about half an hour ago, and Mats was now staring at his phone screen waiting for the notification to disappear and be replaced with ‘Just kidding!’. It never did, though. Benedikt really had messaged him back and Mats was terribly excited and also scared to see what he had said. He knew he had no right to get his hopes up and he could very well be disappointed and feel even worse, that Benedikt was probably telling him they could never talk again and to leave him alone or he would block him. But Mats couldn’t help being eager. Butterflies flew around in his stomach as he slid his finger clumsily across the screen to open it and Benedikt’s message popped up.

It was long. It was _really_ long. Mats scrolled up and down, his heart beating fast as he caught a few words and phrases.

Mats closed his eyes and bit his lip. Half of him was dying to read it and the other half was begging him not to. If it was bad, he may as well get it over with now.

So he opened his eyes, took a deep breath as if he were about to plunge underwater instead of read a Facebook message from a classmate (whom Mats wished was more than just a classmate), and read the first line.

_Benedikt Höwedes: I slept on this last night and I thought about it when I woke up. I’m sorry for abandoning you last night -- I’d just had a really long day and I was exhausted and felt awful, but I do want to help you. And no, don’t try to say you don’t want help and you don’t want to change because I know you do. Not only did you flat out say you thought I was going to help, but you told me what kind of person you want to be meaning yes, you do want to change. I want you to realize though that I’m far from perfect, I do bad things on purpose and make mistakes just like you do. But when I make a mistake I try to fix it. I feel like you just say fuck it and drop everything and give up. It’s never too late to fix a mistake, Mats. As for your comments about yourself...I’m really sorry to hear that that’s how you see yourself. I really don’t know what to say to that. But please don’t say you want to be dead if you don’t really mean it, I could’ve taken that seriously and then we’d have a much bigger problem here. The best thing I can tell you is that I know that you are a good person because you feel bad about what you do, I know you don’t enjoy it because you’re miserable. You’re only hurting yourself. I want you to stop and think about what you’re telling yourself. I do care about you Mats, I’m your friend and I want to support you. Now before you go off on me, don’t think I’m ignoring what you said about me, aka you want to see me naked. I’ll tell you that wasn’t the best way to admit you like me, but it worked. I know you like me and I like you too. But I think if we want anything more out of this, you need to figure out what you want and learn how to respect me because even though we were getting along Friday morning, you were really rude to me about the project before that. If you can stop acting selfish and think about what consequences your actions have on other people, then we’ll talk about it. Remember this Mats. I’ll help you as much as I can but I can’t help you if you don’t want to help yourself. See you on Monday_

After reading it through once, Mats read the whole thing over again. He tried to read between the lines for any hidden message. But Benedikt’s message was pretty straightforward.

Benedikt was willing to give Mats a chance. If he could change.

Mats decided right then and there that he was going to change his whole attitude. For Benni.

He felt like he was floating as he typed in a quick response and he had to keep on deleting it because he couldn’t press the right letters. After several tries he finally got it right.

_Mats Hummels: I’ll pick you up at 315 be ready_

Then he tossed his phone onto the passenger seat (much harder than he had intended; it bounced off onto the floor amidst all the empty McChicken sandwich wrappers and such), stuck his key in the rusty ignition, slammed on the gas and sped away. He had less than an hour to get a haircut, take out money at the bank, go to three different stores to pick up the ground turkey, caulk, and a Webkinz, go back home and drop all that shit off then get to Benedikt’s house looking decent.

Mats smiled. It was certainly possible. That is, if he didn’t get stopped by a cop on the way for speeding and running questionable yellow lights.

He turned on the radio for some motivation, but it wasn’t like he needed any.

\-----

After a good ten minutes of looking in the mirror, trying to fix his hair and splash cold water on his face so it wasn’t so atrociously pink and feeling sorry for himself, Benedikt finally dragged himself out of the bathroom into the kitchen with a towel around his hips.

He checked his iPod for the time. It was 3 o’clock. He needed to be at the school for choir tryouts at 5 and he still needed to find a ride, not to mention the half hour or so it took to get there.

Benedikt was also starving again. His stomach was throbbing painfully with emptiness. He groaned and lay his head down on the table, covering it with his arms in a remarkably Mats-like fashion (except for the fact that he had neither his hood up or his earbuds in).

Almost as soon as he’d put his head down, there was a rap on the front door and half a second later he heard it opening.

Benedikt sat up, utterly confused and a little afraid. “Hello?” he called.

There was no response, but he did hear footsteps making their way through the house and towards where he was seated practically naked in the kitchen with his chemistry poster (which was now sort of wet because he’d been laying down on it) and his dad’s felt tip markers scattered all over the table looking like a child had just worked on a craft project.

What the hell?

 _I’m not even wearing clothes,_ Benedikt thought miserably, thinking of a way he could escape upstairs without being seen or heard and pretend he wasn’t home. If a burglar had just entered the house, Benedikt would have preferred to be fully dressed.

Just as Benedikt was rubbing the back of his neck and wishing he had some clothes on, Mats Hummels strolled into the kitchen, hands in his pockets as if he’d been here millions of times and had not just walked in without an invitation.

Mats stopped. He regarded Benedikt, somewhat sheepishly.

Benedikt stared back, becoming very conscious of the display he was currently giving with his erect nipples. He swallowed and blinked.

“I made you cry,” Mats greeted him quietly.

“What are you talking about?” Benedikt replied absentmindedly. He gazed longingly at Mats from his chair, noting how extraordinarily gorgeous he looked today. His hair was now short and trimmed neatly, slightly longer and standing up in the front. Though Benedikt missed his thick, untamed curls and regretted only running his hands through them once, he thought Mats looked nice with his new hair, too. He looked different. Put-together. And now that his hair was no longer flopping all over the place, Benedikt could see his whole face. It was smooth and perfect, his jawline strong and defined and his eyes rich and full.

Benedikt’s eyes wandered down Mats’ body, memorizing the pattern of his flannel shirt and liking the way his tight gray jeans fit very much but wishing there was less material. He paused along Mats’ waistline. Four fingers in each pocket, thumbs tapping his hips. Benedikt pursed his lips when he accidentally found himself gazing at Mats’ bulge and tore his eyes away, embarrassed.

He had no need to be embarrassed though because Mats was practically drooling as he checked out Benedikt. Evidently, Benedikt had been attempting to style his hair because it was tousled slightly, still damp. Water dripped from his hair down his pale, flawless body, pooling at his collarbones and detouring his nipples, leaving sparkling trails across his skin. Benedikt still had not removed his hand from the back of his neck, leaving his bicep on full display, but Mats’ eyes were lingering on Benni’s stomach, on his abdomen. He couldn’t get over how innocent it looked in comparison to his own. Not that Benni wasn’t thick and well-developed, because he was. But it looked so pure. So much different from Mats’ stomach. Past Benni’s waist, Mats couldn’t see anything past where his v-lines and naval trail dipped into his towel and disappeared.

“Get out of my house,” Benedikt broke the trance half-heartedly because he was really hoping Mats would stay. He took his hand off his neck and crossed his arms across his chest protectively.

Mats smirked at that one. “Look who’s talking. And I, unlike you, told you that I was coming to pick you up and to be ready.”

“Didn’t get your message. And Kira let me in. I was welcome.”

“She’s six, Benni.” Mats was still smiling, his eyes twinkling. “She told me you cried.”

“Why do you seem so gleeful over the idea of me crying?” Benedikt challenged him.

Instantly, the smirk fell from Mats’ lips. “No, Benni. I’m not.” He began tapping his foot anxiously, still looking intently at Benedikt who was fidgeting in his chair. “I’m sorry for making you cry.”

There was no point in denying what had happened at Mats’ house on Thursday night. And if Benedikt wanted Mats to start being honest himself, it would be hypocritical if he lied. “You didn’t make me cry. I made myself cry.”

Mats mumbled a small “oh” then looked down at his feet.

“I bet you never cry,” Benedikt said critically.

“Nope,” agreed Mats proudly. “I can’t cry because I don’t have a soul.”

Benedikt rolled his eyes, shaking his head. He wasn’t going to deal with this Mats today. He was hoping Mats would have gotten the hint after reading his Facebook message…

“Did you even read the message I sent you?”

Mats nodded and instantly felt guilty. It had been one hour and he’d already screwed up. “I’m sorry for saying that.”

“It’s okay. Don’t be sorry. Just don’t do it again,” Benedikt stated. “You can sit, you know.” Mats nodded again then carefully crossed the kitchen and took the seat next to Benedikt, seeming as if he made one wrong move everything would explode. He picked up the orange marker and took its cap off and replaced it repetitively, biting his lip as he stared at the wood floor.

“You’re always apologizing for everything but you never do anything differently.” Benedikt watched Mats’ fingers as he fiddled with the marker, the one he’d used to draw the flames.

“Sorry.”

Benedikt flared his nostrils. Mats Hummels was a lot of work. He tried a different approach. “What brought you here, anyway? You don’t just want to hang out and watch a movie, do you?”

“No.” Mats paused for a brief moment. “I was ready to talk to you. I’m ready to change.”

“Oh, Mats…”

Mats looked up, catching Benedikt’s apologetic hazel eyes. “What’s that?”

“I can’t tonight. I have choir tryouts. But then again, I’m not so sure about that because I have no ride...” Benedikt mused.

“I can take you there,” Mats quickly jumped in.

“Really?” Benedikt looked relieved.

“I’d be more than happy to.”

“Alright. Can we leave at 4:15?” Benni asked, though he sounded anxious.

“Sure.” Mats smiled reassuringly. 

But Benni was still not at ease. He was chewing his lip, concern etched in his face. Mats’ fingers itched to reach out and touch him, tend to him to alleviate his nerves. Before he could stop himself, he did just that, lifting Benni’s chin then caressing his cheek gently. The marker lay forgotten on the table. “What’s wrong?”

“I sound bad today. I’m all congested,” Benni explained, eyes glued to Mats.

“You sound fine. Sing something,” Mats suggested. He pulled back his hand back and it fell lightly onto Benni’s knee. Both of them had failed to notice that they were slowly but surely inching closer and closer to each other.

Benni grinned ever so slightly, his eyes dancing. “No.”

“Sing,” Mats ordered.

“No,” Benni giggled.

“Sing or that towel’s coming right off.” Mats smiled smugly, knowing that either way he’d win.

Benni raised an eyebrow. “Oh, really?”

By now, their faces were so close together that Mats could count each of Benni’s freckles. He reached out and found both of Benni’s hands, enclosing them in his own and squeezing gently as if to ask ‘is this okay?’. Benni nodded, telling him it was and Mats began to trace meaningless shapes on Benni’s soft palms.

“What are you thinking?” Benni asked softly. He recognized the expression on Mats’ face, one of wanting to say something but not knowing how to say it. Mats was quiet for a moment before he spoke.

“I just like you a lot, Benni. That’s all. Just...thank you,” he replied fervently. “Thank you for not giving up on me. I know it seems like I don’t care but I really do. I want this to work, I want to --”

Benni shushed him by pulling one of his hands free and pressing a finger to Mats’ lips. He let it linger there, then gradually shifted his thumb over to run it across Mats’ silky lips. “I know. I know you do. But we have to wait.”

Mats’ face fell. “Why?”

Benni frowned, backing away. “Because so many things aren’t right.”

“What’s not right?” Mats repeated somewhat childishly, pouting.

“We can’t ignore everything you sent me in that message, Mats,” Benedikt sighed. “You’re hiding something from me. And let’s not forget about the money. And the project. You need to get your shit together before I can seriously consider. Plus there's the fact that it's been less than a week...”

“Okay, Mr. Cranky,” Mats said, rolling his eyes.

“I’m not cranky. I just don’t want to make the wrong decision,” Benedikt clarified. Somewhere in the midst of their conversation, Mats had let go of Benedikt’s other hand and it now felt cold, empty.

“Oh, Benni…”

“Don’t ‘Oh, Benni’ me. You need to respect my decision. The more you bug me about it, the less likely it is to happen,” snapped Benedikt as he got to his feet.

“I’m respecting your decision, Benni,” Mats said calmly, watching Benedikt adjust his towel. “Where you going?”

“Getting dressed,” replied Benedikt impatiently, glaring at Mats. 

At this remark, Mats made the most pathetic 'sad puppy' face on the planet that Benedikt had to fight the smile threatening his facade of irritation. “Sorry to disappoint you, Hummels.”

“Not a problem. It’s only a matter of time, Benedikt,” Mats quipped.

Benedikt told him to shut the fuck up then went upstairs to his room, leaving Mats alone in the kitchen. Without Benedikt there to distract him, he finally noticed the poster board on the table that looked an awful lot like it could be a lab safety project.

Mats tugged the poster closer to him. The first thing he noticed was that Benedikt had left his name off of it. Well, that was understandable seeing as Mats hadn’t done any of the work. But it still hurt. He would’ve loved to see their names together on the poster: ‘Benedikt Höwedes and Mats Hummels’. He liked the sound of that. Benni leaving his name off the poster felt like a form of personal disparagement. But after Mats moved on to the illustrations, he wished he hadn’t. What he saw in one box in particular bothered him a lot more than the title box.

It was in the last box, and what Benedikt had drawn was a stick figure that Mats could only conclude was himself trapped in a large fire. Mats felt his heart rattling around in his chest, perspiration gathering at his hairline. Benedikt couldn’t have done this on purpose. He didn’t know. He had no idea. Unless…

“Benni,” Mats said aloud, weakly.

“Yeah?” Benedikt reentered the room and came behind Mats, holding his hips and peering over his shoulder.

“What is this?”


	15. Feeding the Fire

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mats' backstory is finally revealed.

“It’s our project. If I’d known you were coming over I could’ve waited but--”

“No Benedikt, what’s _this_?” Mats jabbed his finger at the last box, Rule #5. Benedikt had never heard him this aggravated and honestly it was a little frightening. He let go of Mats and shuffled away, his mouth instantly drying as he struggled for a reasonable explanation.

“It’s-- uh--” he stammered. “It’s just a picture, Mats. You’re overreacting.”

Benedikt knew it was the wrong thing to say even before he’d finished talking. He chewed his bottom lip. For a moment, Benedikt was worried that Mats would tear the poster in half he looked so distressed; he whirled around and Benedikt leapt back.

“Do you want to see something, Benedikt? Do you want to see what I’m hiding from you?” Mats fumed, his knuckles turning white as his hands clutched the hem of his flannel, his eyes flashing dangerously.

Benedikt gulped. What was he supposed to say to that? How could he be sure that the moisture he thought he saw in Mats’ eyes was really there? What in the hell was happening?

“Mats, calm down, it’s just a shitty picture I drew for a stupid project. I’m not saying that’s what I think of you or anything, it’s literally just a picture…” Wrong. All wrong.

“How dare you,” Mats continued, his voice shaking from either anger or pain, his normally perfect face pale and sweaty. Then before Benedikt could have another pathetic go at defending himself, Mats lifted up his shirt and Benedikt had to cover his mouth and back up into the counter.

On the right side of his stomach was a large patch of rough, scarred skin, not quite the fleshy pink hue of a fresh burn but faded like it had been there for quite a while. Years. Long enough to heal and camouflage itself. But still there.

It was identical to the burn on Mats’ arm. His right arm.

“Still think I’m self-harming, Benedikt?” Mats spat, still holding up his shirt. “Do you really think I’m that pathetic? That I’m some pitiful little girl who thinks I’m fat and ugly and whines about everything and cuts to make people feel sorry for me?”

Benedikt shook his head. He felt numb. He was also beginning to feel angry. What right did Mats have to be so accusatory? He’d had no idea, and Mats refused to tell him anything--

He took a step forward, coming face to face with Mats. “That’s not why people fucking hurt themselves, Mats. You are so insensitive. In fact, I think you just described yourself perfectly; you live to make people feel sorry for you.” He began pacing the kitchen, throwing his arms around wildly. “Look at you, getting all worked up over a fucking picture. A _picture_. Get the fuck over yourself. So what if you got burned a little bit a decade ago? Big fucking deal. You’re still alive. If this is the reason you act the way you do, then you truly are as selfish and pitiful as you think you're not. You have both your parents and go to a great school, you have food, water, and shelter, you're healthy, no one in your family is sick or dying--”

“Shut up,” Mats said, much too serenely for Benedikt’s comfort. “You’d better shut up right now Benedikt. You’ve gone way too far. You’ve said too much.”

When Benedikt paused to look at Mats again, what he saw sent a shockwave through his body. Mats had sat down again and had his forehead in his hands. He was positively trembling, as if Benedikt’s words had rattled him from the inside. And Benedikt’s anger melted as quickly as it appeared.

“Mats, I--”

“Shut the fuck up, Benedikt. Do not talk to me,” grumbled Mats.

Benedikt had to hold onto the counter to keep from collapsing; his knees had turned to jello and he felt lightheaded. What had he just done? What would trigger this sort of reaction from Mats?

And Benedikt realized that there were probably details Mats was not telling him.

“I need a glass,” Mats said flatly.

“A glass of what?” Benedikt returned quickly. “Water? Juice?”

“An empty one.”

Benedikt tore open a cabinet and snatched up the first glass he saw, bounced across the kitchen to Mats and put it in his lap. Mats took his time to lift his head from his hands and take the glass, handling it as if it were precious and would shatter at the slightest jerk. His breathing had calmed significantly from just a few minutes ago, it was no longer harsh and ragged but smooth and slow. He looked up slowly and Benedikt was still standing anxiously above him.

“Move or I’m going to hurt you,” Mats ordered.

Benedikt nodded and obediently stepped to the side, making way for Mats to chuck the glass at the blank wall. It sailed through the air then hit the wall, chipping the paint, then it flew off into a million sparkling pieces scattered across the floor.

“Another one.”

Benedikt jumped to follow orders. “Is a plate okay?”

“Yes.”

Benedikt was relieved. He didn’t know how long this was going to go on so he figured he may as well try to distribute evenly what dishes were being broken. He handed Mats a small green plate, which was promptly flying across the room and soon no longer identifiable as a plate.

After Mats had shattered six dishes, Benedikt tried to hand him another one but he shook his head.

“I’m finished,” he told Benedikt. Most of the color had returned to his face, though his eyes were still blazing with emotion, his pupils dilated. He watched Benedikt imploringly as the blond lowered himself into the seat across from Mats, appearing not quite sure what to do with himself.

They sat in complete silence for several minutes, the sinful poster abandoned on the edge of the table.

“You need to tell me things, Mats,” Benedikt said warily, staring at a blank space on the wall. “You assume that I know these things and I don’t. I can’t tiptoe around you to avoid upsetting you. I can’t read your mind. And there’s still a lot you’re not telling me. When did this fire happen? How? And where?”

Mats narrowed his eyes. “No, Benedikt, _you’re_ the one who’s making assumptions. I don’t _have_ to tell you anything. Maybe it’s something personal and I don’t want to go around telling everyone. Or maybe I just don’t like to talk about it because I don’t want to remember. What gave you the right to criticize me when you don’t know anything about me? How dare you try to tell me that I’m overreacting and being selfish when you have no idea what happened that day? You need to be careful about rambling on and on about what a shitty, ungrateful person I am before you have the full story.”

Benedikt laughed, but it was an empty sound with neither joy nor contempt. “Christ, Mats. It doesn’t matter what’s happened to you in your life, you still need to treat other people right. It’s true that I still don’t know the full story, but I know for a fact that there’s plenty of people out there who have it worse than you and they still find a way to get up every day and do what they need to do and give back to the world. You need to move on at some point. You can’t curl up in a ball and be depressed about it forever.”

“Fuck, why can’t you just say you’re sorry? Why does everything I do have to turn into a lecture? I can’t ever feel sad or upset without someone like you breathing down my neck and reminding me what a piece of crap I am. Fuck, just leave me alone...” Mats covered his face again, rubbing his hairline.

Benedikt bit his lip, his own arms folded across the table. He watched Mats worriedly, watched as the boy who had held up his guard for so many years slowly broke down his walls right in front of him. Benedikt didn’t want to believe that he was the one who caused this. He didn’t know what to do. If he ran away, he wouldn’t have to deal with any of it. If he took the poster and left Mats here in his house and just made it through the presentation on Monday, it would all be over and there could be no more Mats Hummels to complicate things in his life.

But he couldn’t do that. He didn’t want to do that. He couldn’t run away from his own mistakes and challenges if Mats was already facing his because of Benedikt.

And as he and Mats sat in his kitchen together surrounded by shards of shattered glass, he realized that this was not a case of a bad boy falling in love with a good boy and making him want to change his outlook on life. This was a case of two sixteen-year-olds, each with his own flaws and history of bad decisions and stupidity, falling for each other in a way that only tore away façades and revealed all the glory and gore underneath.

Nothing had to change. There were just some things that needed to be found.

“Mats,” Benedikt said quietly. He tapped the pads of his fingers on the table.

“What is it?” Mats mumbled into his hands.

“I’m sorry. I really am. You’re right, I shouldn’t have said those things and I’m sorry. You don’t have to tell me anything but if you want to, I’ll listen. Sometimes it helps to talk about things and other times it doesn’t. It’s okay.” Benedikt swallowed and fidgeted, hoping Mats would understand. By now, all intentions to get to choir tryouts had been forgotten.

Mats let his hands down onto the table but continued to stare at them, not blinking, not moving. “I’m so lonely,” he said expressionlessly.

“No you’re not,” Benedikt said without a breath. “You have me.”

“You don’t understand. That’s not what I mean.”

“Oh,” Benedikt replied, blushing. “What do you mean then?”

“Can I tell you something?” Mats looked up abruptly.

Benedikt nodded. “You can tell me anything you want.”

“Thanks,” Mats said simply.

Benedikt waited for Mats to tell him whatever it was. But Mats didn’t say anything and they just sat there in silence, regarding each other with curiosity.

“Do you want to go somewhere else? My room?” Benedikt finally asked.

“Yeah.”

So Benedikt got up and Mats followed him upstairs. Mats liked how cozy Benedikt’s house was. It wasn’t big and empty like his own house.

 _Nothing is missing here,_ thought Mats.

He liked Benedikt’s room even more than the rest of the house. It was even messier than his own room, but the most of the mess wasn’t clothes. It was books and old schoolwork and deodorant and various cords and plugs all tangled together, cases for old, outdated versions of ancient video games and coins and a few personal items that Mats would’ve teased Benni about if he hadn’t been feeling so anxious. But Mats’ favorite thing about the whole room was that Benedikt had a lot of stuffed animals strewn across the floor and his bed, elephants and frogs and bears and sheep, something which Benedikt appeared to be embarrassed about as he immediately began scooping them off his bed and throwing them carelessly into the corner, muttering something about how he just never got around to getting rid of them.

“I bet you sleep with them,” Mats declared as he sat down next to Benni on his stuffed-animal-free bed.

“I don’t,” Benedikt mumbled, all the effort he’d put into getting rid of the atrocious pink on his face going to waste. “I don’t sleep with any of them.”

Mats smiled and poked Benedikt’s stomach. “Don’t lie. What’s your favorite?”

“My monkey,” Benedikt answered, then added quickly as an afterthought, “when I was small. I liked my monkey the best.”

“Can I see him?”

Benedikt nodded then got up to find his monkey. He came up with a battered and well-loved creature with long legs and arms and a smiling face and big ears on the side of its head. Benedikt held it up and grinned sheepishly.

“I called him Jamba. As in short for ‘Jambalaya’,” Benedikt explained, feeling like a complete fool. “I was like three or something. Don’t even--”

But Mats’ eyes had already lit up and his mouth was quivering with laughter. “Jambalaya?! Benni you know jambalaya is a food, not a monkey. What a dumb name for a stuffed monkey.”

Benedikt pretended to look hurt. Or maybe he really was hurt. Mats didn’t know. But he hated seeing Benedikt just standing there with his monkey, looking like he wanted to sink into the floor and disappear.

“Come here.” Mats beckoned Benni to sit next to him again. Benni obeyed, positioning Jamba in Mats’ lap after he had sat down, making sure to leave a few inches between them but not enough so that if he moved his leg or arm he would brush against Mats.

It was the most tranquil they’d been since being assigned to work together at the beginning of the week. It felt much longer than that, really. The past week had been so chaotic that it felt like they’d known each other a lifetime. Mats fiddled with Jamba while Benni silently debated whether or not he should put his hand on Mats’ thigh and change his mind about having to think things over first. Right now, Mats looked so innocent and carefree with the stupid little monkey in his hands, his tongue poking around his cheeks and his eyebrows slightly furrowed as he, too, thought about something.

Benedikt wanted to know what Mats was thinking. He wanted to know everything about Mats. He wanted to understand how such a gorgeous person could be so broken. In just less than a week, Benedikt had learned so much about Mats and his impression of him had flipped upside down, but it seemed like the more he learned the less he understood. He wanted to reach Mats but he didn’t know how, didn’t know how to break past the barrier Mats had built around himself. He felt that by trying to fight Mats’ defense, he was tearing apart Mats himself. He recalled the flare in Mats’ eyes, the sheer terror on his face when he’d asked about the poster and he knew what Mats wanted to tell him had to do with that. Benedikt regretted how he’d reacted to Mats’ outburst and his throat was beginning to swell with pain as it sunk in. He had told Mats that he was his friend and that he would help him. And what had he done instead? He’d insulted and criticized Mats, who was just beginning to reveal himself, without even giving him a proper chance.

“My brother died in that fire.”

Mats had spoken so quietly that Benedikt wasn’t sure it hadn’t only been his imagination.

And then the words slowly soaked in, burned into his skin and blood and sent a shock to his brain that made the room sway. He opened his mouth to say something, anything really, but nothing came out.

What was one supposed to say in response to something like that?

Mats had stilled, the monkey still in his hands but frozen and Benedikt shivered. He felt like the worst person on the planet, just sitting there with his mouth agape, not even making any efforts to comfort the impossible boy next to him.

“I had a brother who died in the same fire that burned me.” Mats spoke slowly and evenly, his voice not wavering a tone.

Benedikt finally found his voice, but his heart was beating like a hummingbird’s wings and he wasn’t quite sure what he was saying. “Wh-when?”

Mats answered without missing a beat. “A long time ago. We were four. I don’t really remember what happened and I don’t want to know. I know we were in the kitchen and someone was cooking and the oven was on and it was no one’s fault. We don’t live in that same house, we moved about a year after it happened. I’m not sorry about that. But sometimes I feel guilty because it’s like we just left him there.”

With another paralyzing jolt, Benedikt remembered the family pictures in Mats’ house. The little boy who looked just like Mats. The two were glued to each other’s sides until one year, the second boy disappeared. That hadn’t been a cousin. That was Mats’ brother.

“Twins?” was all Benedikt could choke out before Mats nodded and went on.

“Yeah. For years after he died and I was hurt my mom and dad were always fighting and it was awful, I hardly ever went to school so the school social worker got involved and that just made everything worse. I was a horrible little kid, I kept biting and hitting other kids at school and none of the teachers knew what to do with me so I got pulled out. You think they’d’ve had a little sympathy but there’s only so much they could do.” Mats gave a short, bitter laugh and shook his head before continuing. Benedikt simply listened, incapable of doing much else except staring at Jamba in Mats’ hands; he was holding Jamba so tightly that Benedikt thought the little monkey might burst.

“It wasn’t pretty for a long time, but we were functional. I saw a counselor for a while and eventually went back to school and my parents started getting their shit together again and cleaned the house and started buying real groceries instead of just microwaveable pot pies and had Kira, who I guess was supposed to be sort of a replacement for Jonas.”

Benedikt gulped at the idea of little Kira being a last-ditch attempt to pull a crumbling family together. Before he could think over it he blurted out, “Does she know?”

Mats bit his lip. “No. She never needed to know, but she has to know soon and I’m going to have to be the one to tell her because my parents are...are…”

He looked away and Benedikt tried to pretend he hadn’t noticed how Mats’ voice had finally cracked and trembled, how his shoulders were just noticeably shaking in the tiniest extreme.

“Your parents are what?” Benedikt urged, understanding that Mats had been keeping this bottled up for years and needed to get it out. Half of him felt awful for forcing Mats to recall the tragedy, but he knew it was necessary.

“They’re...they’re acting like it didn’t happen. That he never…” Mats was unable to finish and shook his head, curling over and covering his eyes with both his hands and Jamba.

And as if Mats finally conceding had an effect on him, Benedikt felt all the feeling coming back into his body and he felt an incredible sadness he’d never felt before, feeling it for Mats as well who had suppressed his own sadness for so long that he didn’t know how to handle it. Everything made sense now and it pained Benedikt to think of all the assumptions he had made and how he had treated Mats, but shit now was not the time to be making amends and apologies when all Mats needed right now was what he never had his whole life.

He leaned to his right ever so slightly, grazing Mats’ back and Mats jerked away.

“Go away, Benni,” Mats pleaded in a voice so beaten that Benni didn’t know if he’d be able to leave Mats by himself. “Please just go away, I don’t want you to see me like this.”

Benedikt nodded though he knew Mats couldn’t see him and slowly stood up and trudged across the room, procrastinating as much as he could because it would be cruel to leave Mats alone. All he could hear was the sound of Mats’ uneven breathing and his own head screaming furiously at him for everything he’d done wrong.

Before he slipped out, he took one last glance at Mats then quickly shut his eyes, almost grateful that Mats wanted him to leave.

“I’ll be downstairs, take your time,” Benni informed Mats with as much confidence as he could muster before shutting the door gently. He heard a wheezing gasp before he was halfway down the hall and he raced the rest of the way downstairs, not wanting to hear or see any more of the pain he’d inflicted upon Mats Hummels.


	16. What Friends Are For

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mats is ready to talk to Benedikt again.

Benedikt tried to nibble on some crackers while waiting for Mats to collect himself, but they tasted like cardboard and had the consistency of wool against his dry mouth so he shut the box and put them back in the cupboard.

It was 4:02. His chances of making it on time to choir tryouts were slim to none, but he didn’t care in the least. Mats had been having his privacy for the past fifteen minutes and Benedikt thought it might be okay to go back upstairs and peek his head in, so he rubbed his eyes, ran his fingers through his hair and dragged himself upstairs.

He knocked on his bedroom door lightly and waited for a response.

“Okay,” Mats’ voice said from the other side of the door and Benedikt cracked it open. Mats had moved so he was sitting with his back against the headboard, hugging his knees to his chest. Jamba lay next to Mats, obsolete but not forgotten.

Mats looked up when he heard the door opening. “I’m sorry I made you leave.”

“I understand, it’s fine. Are you okay?”

Mats shrugged and scooted over. “Come sit with me.”

Benedikt immediately crossed the room and climbed into his bed next to Mats. He arranged his pillows so they’d be more comfortable and this time when he pressed himself close to Mats, Mats didn’t shy away but instead some of tenseness in his body seemed to loosen. He loved having Benni this close to him; it was warm and comfortable and it just felt right.

“Do you mind if I talk to you a bit?” Mats asked, regarding Benni with hopeful curiosity.

“Talk as much or as little as you want. I promise I’ll listen,” Benni reassured him as he picked up Jamba, who was just a little damp and Benni’s chest ached at that.

Mats paused. “I want to talk but I don’t know what to say.”

“I could ask you questions?” Benni suggested uncertainly. He wasn’t sure if that would be the best idea but it was all he could come up with. Fortunately, Mats agreed to that so Benni tried to think of some things to ask that would help Mats release some of his emotions but wouldn’t upset him too much.

Just as Benni was thinking this, Mats said, “Ask whatever you want. Don’t tiptoe around me. I’m fine.”

Benni nodded and swallowed before asking his question. “Do you miss him?”

Mats folded his hands and looked at them while he spoke, not in same deadbeat voice he’d used initially but calmly.

“I don’t miss him as much as I feel like there’s something missing.”

“Because you were twins?” Benedikt had always wondered what it was like being a twin, but had never found a good answer because asking a twin what it was like being a twin was like asking a singleton what it was like being a singleton. He figured the only people who knew what it was like being a twin were those who had experienced both having a twin and not having a twin.

“Not just that we were twins, but because he was my brother and we’d spent every waking moment of our lives together until he died. I don’t really remember much about him, but I always felt sort of lonely growing up. I liked to imagine what it would be like if he were still there with me and…for some time I pretended that he was. I’d talk to him even though he wasn’t there, I’d insist on setting a spot for him at the table and I’d get extra crayons and worksheets for him at school and such. That’s when I started going to counseling, not because I had an imaginary friend because I guess that was just a way for someone my age to deal with it, but because I really did think he was still there.”

Mats shuddered and Benedikt set aside his own sense of unease at the idea to let go of Jamba and squeeze Mats’ left forearm. Mats sniffed hard and continued, Benni’s touch letting him know it was okay.

“I started having terrible nightmares and I would wake up screaming my head off and throwing up and I couldn’t breathe sometimes. My parents would of course come running into my room and pick me up but I attacked them, I tried to scratch and bite them so they had to put me back in bed until I exhausted myself and fell asleep again. I outgrew it after about a year, though, and I stopped talking to him when he wasn’t there and yelling at people who accidentally sat on him.”

Benedikt interrupted Mats to fumble with another question, hoping he wouldn’t throw him off track. “Do you...do you ever still…”

“Not really. Rarely. And even if it does happen it’s not a big deal. It’s just like ‘oh okay I dreamt that my brother died again’. It’s not so much because I’m traumatized from the fire or mourning my brother that I’m such a shitty person--”

“You’re not a shitty person,” Benedikt corrected him, involuntarily squeezing a little too hard on Mats’ forearm so when he realized it he relaxed and kneaded small circles into his skin.

Mats ignored him. “I think it fucked me up so much when I was little that I grew up as an outcast which fucked me up even more. No one knew what the hell to do with me. That’s what made me into the kind of person I am. I acted out because I knew I could get away with it. And when I got older I stopped acting out and started slacking off and smoking weed all day instead because life is too demanding and I grew up not knowing anything else except being able to get away with everything I did, or I guess didn’t, do.”

Benedikt bit his lip and nodded. That made sense.

Mats rubbed his nose and took a minute before speaking again, his forehead creased as his mouth twisted into a small frown. “Do you think it’s bad that I don’t miss him a lot?”

“I don’t think so. You were much too young to really remember. But it sounds like you do miss him. You’re just not really sure what exactly you’re missing. Does that make sense?” Benedikt supplied carefully.

“I think that’s it,” Mats said.

Benedikt didn’t know what else to say so he kept quiet and waited for Mats to continue if he wanted to. While they sat together in relative silence Benedikt noticed that one of Mats’ black socks was halfway down his foot so he leaned over to fix it, wondering how Mats managed that but deciding to let it go.

“Can I ask you something else?” Benedikt said softly after he had straightened up again and tucked his fingers under his chin.

“Go ahead.”

“Why did you say you don’t want to be here?”

Mats’ eyes darted to Benedikt. “I never said that, I wouldn’t have come over if I didn’t want to be with you.”

“You know what I mean, Mats,” Benedikt sighed. Just because Mats was being open about his past now, that didn’t mean he was going to willingly discuss that message he’d sent the other night and he would probably play clueless unless Benedikt was direct about it. “You said you’d be better off dead and that you don’t even want to be here. Why did you say that?”

Mats conveniently fell into a rather fake-sounding coughing fit right after Benedikt clarified his question, to which Benedikt raised his eyebrows.

“Are you done stalling?” Benedikt pressed once Mats finally stopped and was patting his chest dramatically with a poorly enacted expression of pain on his face.

“I think I need some water,” he said hoarsely.

“I think you need to answer my question.”

Now it was Mats’ turn to raise his eyebrows. “You said I didn’t have to tell you anything I didn’t want to tell you.”

“I know, but this is an exception. If you’re suicidal--”

“For god’s sake, Benni, I’m not. Stop being dramatic. There’s a big difference between wishing I were the one who had died instead and wanting to purposely kill myself,” Mats said impatiently, then softened his tone upon seeing Benni’s worried face. “I know it’s just because you care and all, but you’re trying to frame me as something I’m not.” He bit his tongue and felt his ears warming at making the fast assumption that Benni cared.

“I do care and that’s why I had to check because I’d never be able to live with myself if something happened to you. But now I understand. It’s survivor’s guilt,” Benedikt replied.

“No, I don’t really know because it’s been so long. I’m past it now,” Mats said, but he was thinking more about what Benni said before the part about survivor’s guilt.

“Then what are you so afraid of, Mats?”

The question surprised Benedikt almost as much as it did Mats. They turned to face each other at the same time, Mats looking confused and Benedikt sheepish.

“What do you mean?”

Benedikt looked down and started playing with a loose thread on his sheet. “I don’t know…” he mumbled. “Forget it.” Then, so silently that it may have been a thought, “I just don’t understand…”

Mats reached out and lifted Benedikt’s chin lightly. “What don’t you understand?” His eyes were wide and lustful, his expression gentle and Benedikt found it impossible to tear his gaze away again.

“I don’t understand why you’re so afraid of yourself,” Benedikt said in almost a whisper. “It’s like you’re trying to beat yourself down because you’re afraid of what will happen if you do anything different.”

“I’m trying, Benni, I’m trying. I promise. Give me some time, okay?” Mats said confidently. He licked his lips and Benni nodded, not looking quite convinced but needing to trust Mats.

Mats lifted his arms and raised his eyebrows for permission. Benedikt didn’t need to consent before Mats had wrapped his arms around Benedikt and pulled him close, Benni reciprocating and falling into him, altogether relieved.

For a long time they stayed just like that, Mats feeling Benedikt’s steady heart beat against his own heart and Benni’s soft, hot skin working wonders on his raw cheek, which he’d taken care to furiously wipe dry before Benni came back. The overwhelming scent of Mats was filling Benedikt’s nose, and Benedikt figured whatever shampoo or body wash Mats used must be pretty strong because he couldn’t really smell much today on account of his stuffed nose. Mats smelled like grapefruit and cupcakes and all those fragrance mists at Bath & Body Works and the more Benedikt thought about it, the more he wanted to know why Mats smelled like...well, smelled like a girl.

“Mats?” he said into Mats’ neck.

“Mhmm?” Mats hummed and Benni could feel the vibrations of his voice against his chest, making him shiver.

“What do you wash yourself with?”

“Uh...soap and water? Do I smell bad?” Mats supplied, puzzled.

“No, I mean...what kind of soap?” Benedikt murmured, just now realizing that he’d been squeezing his eyes tightly shut so he relaxed them but still kept them closed.

Mats chuckled, sending more chilling vibrations through Benedikt. “I don’t know, some weird ass fruit shit that my mom gets for my sister--”

“Mats!” Benedikt pulled away with a ‘really you use your six-year-old sister’s shampoo?!’ look plastered all over his face.

“Because--” Mats began defensively before being cut off.

“Sorry I asked,” Benedikt said with a raised eyebrow.

Mats’ mouth twisted into a sly grin. “Is that a smile I see?”

Benedikt shook his head, biting the insides of his mouth to hide his smile but it was no use and he burst out laughing because dear god Mats Hummels was such an idiot. A ridiculously delightful yet disturbed idiot, at that.

Mats smiled in satisfaction while Benni laughed for a short moment, those stupid crinkles next to his eyes popping up again and staying there even after he stopped laughing and caught Mats’ eyes again.

“I’m proud of you,” Benedikt said, quite plainly.

“I didn’t do anything though,” Mats reminded him, suddenly sullen and Benedikt frowned.

“Yes you did. You found the courage to tell me about something that’s hard for you to talk about, and you had the heart to trust me even though I haven’t been the greatest friend,” Benedikt pointed out seriously.

“You’re the best friend I’ve ever had,” Mats admitted, looking down and reddening ever so slightly (Benedikt was envious because his own lighter complexion was useless in disguising his embarrassment and he was pretty sure that Mats had never seen his natural skin tone because he was always either blushing or angry around him).

Benedikt didn’t quite know what to say to that, so he just chewed his lip and blushed along with Mats. They’d only been speaking for less than a week, after all.

“I forgive you, Benni,” Mats finally said. “You didn’t know and you were right, after all. No one’s ever yelled at me like that and--”

“Sorry,” Benedikt jumped in quickly.

“Let me finish. I think that’s what I needed, for someone to knock some sense into me,” Mats explained, almost jokingly.

“I had--”

“Stop. I don’t want to hear it. Let’s go to your audition, it’s…” Mats leaned over to check Benni’s alarm clock, “--4:36. Let’s go. I don’t want you to miss your audition because of my whining.”

“It’s not that important, what we talked about was much more important plus it’s my fault I didn’t--”

Benedikt was cut off by Mats clamping a hand over his mouth and pulling him off the bed so he tried to shove Mats away and when that didn’t work, licked the palm of his hand which just made Mats laugh at the strange sensation and move his arm around Benedikt’s shoulders.

“You’re the worst,” Benedikt complained, though he couldn’t disregard how happy he felt at not only Mats’ affection but the fact that Mats himself seemed truly happy for the first time since Benedikt had yanked his earbud out in the back of the classroom on that first god forsaken day. Mats was finally able to breathe without carrying around the deadweight that had been haunting him for years, and although it was a great relief Benedikt knew it was only the first step in healing. He still needed to think about everything that he and Mats had and hadn’t said and done and address it when the time was right. But for now, he and Mats would enjoy their time together. Benedikt couldn’t believe it only been less than a week, it felt like a lifetime ago that Mats Hummels was not a part of his life.

“Thank you,” replied Mats as he pushed Benedikt into his truck. “You’re quite awful yourself.”

 _I like it better this way,_ thought Benedikt as he buckled his seatbelt.


	17. Change in Plans

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mats and Benedikt go on a date (I guess) and plan another one (ish).

“Where am I taking you?” Mats asked as Benedikt studied Mats' phone, trying to find the directions to this school which apparently was out in the middle of nowhere.

Google Maps took its sweet time to load and Benedikt tapped his hand on his leg impatiently, urging it to go faster. The minutes were ticking by and he was beginning to get nervous about missing his audition. Mats’ confession gradually slipped to the back of his mind for later because Mats seemed like he didn’t really want to talk about it anymore and was acting like nothing had happened. Somewhere inside Benedikt, a tiny alarm bell was ringing about Mats’ sudden change in mood from calm and solemn to overly affectionate and enthusiastic, but it was easy enough to ignore. For now.

Google Maps finally decided to load and at the same time that ‘53 minutes away’ popped up, God decided to remind Benedikt that, actually, he was still sick and therefore stood no chance of making it, he sneezed twice in succession to which Mats responded by asking if Benedikt was trying to resurrect the Devil. Benedikt told him to shut up.

“And it's 53 minutes away,” Benedikt added miserably, sniffling as he handed Mats his phone back. “We wouldn't make it on time.”

Mats scrolled down the page, frowning, looking for an alternate route that was shorter. Not only did he not want Benedikt to have to miss the audition all because of him, but he wanted to have an excuse to spend more time with Benedikt. There were no shorter routes, though -- the only other ones were both over an hour long.

“What the fuck…” Mats muttered, refreshing the directions to see if the time estimate would change. “It's 20 miles away. It really shouldn't take that long, maybe there's traffic or something…”

Benedikt sighed. “I don't know. That's cutting it close. There's a long wait between checking in and the actual audition, but if you don't sign in by when you're supposed to they cut you off. Besides, I sound awful so it would probably be a waste of everyone's time.”

“Fuck, Benni,” Mats groaned, giving up on Google Maps and stretching out to lay his head across Benedikt’s lap. “You are just a ray of fucking sunshine, aren't you?”

Benedikt rolled his eyes but started smoothing Mats’ hair back from his forehead and Mats’ eyelids fluttered as a satisfied noise escape his lips. Benedikt’s pout was no match for his magical hands.

“I’m not being negative, I’m being realistic. There’s no way we’d make it on time at this point, even if there weren’t traffic. And again, like you said, I sound awful,” Benedikt reiterated his logic calmly, very much enjoying the feel of Mats’ hair on his hands.

“Come on, I was just teasing you,” Mats said. “It’s really not bad at all. You would’ve been fine.”

Benedikt raised his eyebrows.

Half of Mats’ mouth snaked into a crooked grin and he moved his head closer to Benedikt’s stomach. “Your face looks so round and cute from this angle. And your ears are pointy.”

Benedikt did not look impressed with that one. He stopped playing with Mats’ hair and attempted to push him away, but Mats simply rolled up Benni’s shirt off his hips and started nosing at the pale flesh it revealed, ending Benedikt’s protests immediately. As Mats made his way around Benni’s torso, Benni’s head fell back against the seat the closer Mats came to his center.

“Love your stomach,” Mats mumbled.

“Mats, no…” Benni whined, but the way his mouth had dropped open and his eyes screwed shut suggested something different as Mats’ tongue found his abdomen, leaving cool streaks wherever it went and sending hot waves through his blood. He felt his groin stiffening and pressure building up in his stomach as Mats moved lower and lower, nibbling at his skin. Mats’ hands tightened around his hip bones to the point where it almost hurt, but Benedikt’s brain was too woolly to worry about bruising and the fact that Mats apparently had some sort of stomach fetish or something.

“Mats…” he moaned as he vaguely recognized Mats’ hands moving from his hips and grazing across his wet stomach, fumbling with his jeans and opening them. Mats then ghosted his fingers over the trail of coarse hair leading from Benni’s navel into his boxers and Benni hardened even more, throbbing with need. It took all his self control to keep his hips from jerking off the seat before Mats even tugged down his boxers; Mats seemed to notice Benni’s lack of restraint and gloated.

“Did you think I was going to blow you in my truck in broad daylight, Höwedes?” he snickered, inching away slightly to get a look at Benni’s face.

“Please, Mats,” Benni begged as he grabbed Mats’ hair to pull him in again. “I want this. I want you.” Mats gave a sharp laugh before he began to suck at Benni’s hard, hot stomach again, sending deep reverberations through him while his fingers teased Benni’s cock, making him squirm.

At the same moment that Benedikt’s stomach emitted a loud, ravenous rumble, Mats sat up abruptly and returned to his seat, still laughing.

“What the fuck, Mats,” Benedikt mewled, flustered. His stomach was still tingling and he was light-headed. Involuntarily, he reached into his own boxers and started palming himself, desperate to finish the job that Mats had so cruelly tipped the iceberg of until he felt a sharp tug on his wrist, yanking his hands away from his cock.

“Stop,” Mats hissed in his ear. “Not now. We’re outside.”

Benedikt winced, but as he turned and saw the longing flickering in Mats’ dark eyes, his tension began to slide away and his thoughts gradually became more lucid. Mats was right. They were lucky no one had walked right by in those few short minutes.

“Are you hungry?” Mats asked quietly, hoping to distract Benedikt from what had just almost happened because really, he felt guilty about it. Not finishing.

Benedikt was hungry as hell. He’d hardly eaten anything in the past 48 hours. He nodded eagerly and Mats pecked a kiss to his nose before turning back to the wheel. He keyed the ignition and tapped the gas pedal. “Let’s go eat, then. And I’ll get you a nice hot drink for your throat.”

Benedikt nodded again, still unable to get out a proper word. God, how embarrassing. If that didn’t just give away how little experience he had...He felt his cheeks warming and his nose burned on the tip where Mats’ lips had touched. He lifted a hand and pressed it with two fingers.

“Alright?” Mats asked.

“Alright,” Benedikt said weakly, still a little shaken. Mats reached over and rested a hand on Benni’s thigh and Benni placed his own hand on top of Mats’ to make certain he couldn’t take it away again.

For a while, Mats drove in silence. After re-buttoning his pants and adjusting his twisted shirt, Benni just watched out the front window, trying not to sneeze again or make any other weird involuntary noises, thinking about Mats Hummels and wondering where Mats Hummels was taking him to eat. Just less than two hours ago, he had insisted that he needed time to think about things and now he was regretting tearing himself away from Mats in the kitchen to put clothes on. And if he hadn’t left the kitchen, maybe Mats wouldn’t have noticed the poster...then what would’ve happened? What would things be like between them then?

Probably worse.

“Mats.”

“Yeah?”

Benedikt curled his index finger around one of Mats’. “How did this happen?”

Mats knitted his eyebrows together. “How did what happen?”

“Us...doing this.”

Mats shrugged. “We got assigned to work together, we hated each other, you came over to my house to yell at me for blackmailing Julian and now we’re friends. Although you know I wish we were more than that.”

Benedikt hesitated a moment before responding, his voice coming out much more feebly than he would’ve hoped. “I wish we were too.”

“I think I love you, Benni,” Mats said simply as he rotated the steering wheel with one hand to make a left turn.

Benedikt’s heart jumped a funny little rhythm. “How’s that? Do you realize how short a time it’s been? That’s ridiculous.”

“Doesn’t matter. I think you’re overthinking it. I never said I was _in_ love with you, but I do love you. Why wouldn’t I after everything you’ve done for me?” Mats pointed out.

“I metaphorically killed you. I drew you stuck in a fire and I enjoyed it.” Benedikt hung his head, noticing that Mats’ hand had begun to twitch underneath his.

“I know you didn’t mean it. It was nothing, I did overreact. And anyway, if I hadn’t seen that drawing I probably wouldn’t have flipped out on you, which means that I wouldn’t have ended up telling you about my brother and...and I needed to tell someone. I never thanked you for letting me talk to you, did I? Thanks for listening to me, Benni. You probably don’t understand how much better I feel now that there’s someone else who at least knows why...why I’m...I don’t know...” Mats trailed off, shaking his head.

Benedikt gave Mats a moment to think before responding, as houses and trees gradually turned into apartment residencies which turned into office buildings and then restaurants and apparel shops and Benedikt realized that Mats was taking him into the city. He found himself wondering why Mats was so quick to turn it around and forgive him for everything he had done wrong.

“You know, Mats, I don’t think you need to change at all. You’re already right where you need to be. I just think you need to do a little more of what you know is right for you and less of what’s wrong. It takes courage, but you showed me that you have it.”

“Right,” Mats muttered as he pressed his fingers into Benedikt’s leg. Benedikt squeezed his hand.

“Let’s make a new project. We can both work on it,” Benedikt suggested.

“I don’t want to. The one you did is fine. What’s done is done,” Mats replied, slowing down for a red light. He turned over his shoulder to face Benni, tilting his head just enough to look endearing and Benni blushed for the millionth time.

“You sure? Presentation on Monday?” Benedikt reminded him, raising an eyebrow.

Mats lifted his chin up quickly and faced forwards again as a means of consent -- Benedikt could’ve sworn he also winked. Then when the light turned green, Mats drove only a few more blocks before squeezing into a meter space and showing Benedikt a place similar to Chipotle, but supposedly fancier and better quality.

“I’ll be honest, I thought you were going to rip it up for a moment,” Benedikt said cautiously after Mats pulled out the key.

Mats pulled his hand out from Benedikt's and scratched his arm underneath his flannel. “I thought I might too. I already ripped up something else of yours.”

“What now?” Benedikt appeared utterly confused.

Swinging his keys around his finger and watching them twirl, Mats sucked in a breath and debated over whether or not to tell Benni what he’d done yesterday. What he didn’t know couldn’t hurt him...but if he did know maybe he would be hurt. That Mats would take the effort to buy something nice with him in mind and then destroy it.

It was worse than drawing a stupid little picture. The picture was harmless. What Mats had done was outright immature.

Finally, Mats stopped swinging his keys and dropped them in his lap but continued to stare at them. “I bought you a present yesterday, but then I got mad and I tore it up and cut my hair.”

Benedikt was quiet at first and Mats gulped heavily, fearing a lecture about how immature he was and how he had no self-control. But then Benedikt said, quite easily, “Well, thank you for thinking about me, even if it didn’t end how you might’ve wanted it to. And I guess that would explain the haircut, too. Which I do like. You look nice.”

Mats felt a smile tugging at his lips and he brought a hand to his mouth to cover it. “I’ll go back and get you another one.”

“You don’t have to,” Benedikt said modestly.

“I’m going to anyway. Let’s go inside, I’m starving,” Mats replied tersely. And with that he pushed open the door and climbed out of the truck, Benedikt following suit.

Benedikt pursed his lips as Mats marched straight past the meter without paying. He ended up fishing through his own pockets and slipped in enough coins to give them an hour then turned back around to examine Mats’ douchebag truck looking very out of place amidst all the rich, fancy cars of the city dwellers.

He was fine with some things staying just the same.

\-----

Benedikt chose a lime-cilantro burrito bowl, which he enjoyed very much, alongside a spicy Mexican hot chocolate that Mats insisted on him getting (“It’ll feel good on your throat, trust me,” he claimed). Mats himself went with a Coke and, as he expressed to the employee taking their order, “whatever comes with the most Jalapeños”. After their order was complete, Mats shoved Benedikt out of the way so he could pay while Benedikt stood beside him with his arms crossed in a ‘you may have won this time but I’m not happy about this’ kind of way.

They received a number and two glasses of ice water with straws, then went to sit down in a booth. Benedikt guzzled down three-fourths of the glass without coming up for a breath as Mats watched with pertinence.

“Thirsty?”

“Very,” Benedikt said heavily before returning to finish off the glass.

Mats smirked. “Déjà vu.”

Benedikt rolled his eyes as he slurped up the last of his water. Mats pushed over his own nearly-full glass which Benedikt gratefully accepted, not even bothering to exchange straws, something which made Mats’ chest dance with adoration.

Their food was brought over on a tray in place of their number and Mats distributed the items; he put the chips in the middle with the salsa, Benedikt’s bowl and hot chocolate in front of him, then took his own plate and Coke. Benedikt ate like a wolf, shoveling rice and chicken into his mouth one bite after the other without even looking up, which was fortunate for Mats because he was able to get away with scooping up a handful of Jalapenos that had fallen out of his burrito onto his shirt and pop them in his mouth without Benedikt noticing.

“Benni,” Mats said after he’d swallowed a particularly generous mouthful.

“Mhm?”

“Are you feeling any better?”

Benedikt stopped eating and steered his attention from his bowl to Mats. “I am, thanks for asking.”

Mats set his burrito down and his eyes flickered nervously about. “Good. Well, I was wondering...if you’re feeling up to it…”

“Yeah?” Benedikt encourage him. “Spill.”

“Well, I was thinking about taking my sister to a One Direction concert tomorrow night and I was wondering if...uh…if you wanted to come with? Just so I don’t have to suffer through it alone, I mean?” Mats knew he was rambling but the adorable smirk on Benni’s face was no deterrent. “Kira really likes them so I thought it’d be nice to take her since I’m such a crappy brother most of the time and...you don’t have to but I guess it could be kinda fun if you were there too and I think she’s sort of in love with you, by the way, so she’d be happy if you came and of course I’d pay for your ticket and shirt and--” Mats abruptly cut off and grimaced at his slip, how on earth did that come out? He knew perfectly well that Benedikt didn’t want a shirt with the faces of the members of One Direction plastered all over it.

Benedikt giggled. “One Direction?”

Mats nodded, a bit overenthusiastically since Benedikt had not yet flat out refused in disgust. “Yeah, it’s this British boy band that sings that you don’t know you’re beautiful song you’ve probably heard, their names are, I don’t know, there’s like Louis and Hagrid and--”

Benedikt spat out the sip of hot cocoa he’d taken then quickly covered his mouth, his eyes wide in embarrassment.

Mats handed him a napkin apologetically.

After Benedikt had finished cleaning up the liquid he’d sprayed all over the table while Mats sat there awkwardly not doing anything to help, he said, “Of course I’ll go with you. I love One Direction.” He smiled a genuine smile, the one that Mats had grown to love so much but saw so rarely.

Mats raised a curious eyebrow; he’d meant to ask about what kind of music Benni liked but he’d never have guessed it’d be teenybopper bubblegum pop. “Really?”

“No, I was kidding,” Benedikt snorted, shaking his head. “But I’ll still go with you. It’ll be fun. I was planning on going on a run tomorrow, too. Do you want to come?”

Mats’ cheeks burned, from both missing Benni’s crack at humor and the fact that he couldn’t go on a run with Benni because he sucked at running. “Uh...no. Sorry. I don’t run.”

Benedikt’s bottom lip jutted out. “Please? It won’t be that bad, I promise. I usually run by myself but it’s more fun when you have someone to talk to.” (And also to show off to, but Benedikt didn’t mention that part and tried not even to think about that because that was most definitely not why he wanted Mats to come with him…).

Mats picked up his napkin and started folding it up as he considered the offer. Well, Benedikt had agreed to go to the concert with him, after all...so it would only be fair to suffer through a short run in return, even if it meant humiliating himself (plus he’d get to witness Benedikt’s running photos in person). So he said, “Alright, fine. But you can’t go fast.”

“I’m not fast,” said Benedikt hastily, taking another long sip of his spicy hot cocoa to disguise the fact that he was lying.

“You did cross country last year,” Mats said accusatively, narrowing his eyes (and not mentioning that he’d gone on Facebook and looked at all Benedikt’s running photos with that beautifully intense look of focus on his face and his hair flying back and those short shorts with his fucking leg muscles popping all over the place). “Why aren’t you doing it this year, by the way?”

“I didn’t turn my physical in on time,” answered Benedikt honestly, shrugging. “I might do indoor track this winter though. Or I was thinking about trying out for basketball--”

“What now?” Mats repeated Benedikt’s line from earlier. He was enjoying humoring Benedikt, who was not-so-subtly trying to impress him. He tossed the napkin he was holding aside and folded his hands across the table, excited to hear whatever shit Benedikt was about to come up with because he did not recall seeing any basketball photos on Facebook.

“Well, you know how our varsity sucks, we can barely hold on to anyone over six feet so I have the height advantage there--” (Mats resisted the urge to point out that he was slightly taller) “--and if I put on some weight and went to some pre-season sessions I think I’d stand a chance.”

Mats sunk his teeth into his lip to stifle his laughter at how serious Benedikt appeared to be. “Benni, have you ever played basketball before?”

Benedikt stumbled a bit on that one. “A bit, I played rec league a while back but never anything serious, I…” He trailed off at the look on Mats’ face and narrowed his eyes suspiciously. “Are you making fun of me?”

“Noooooo,” Mats lied, holding his hands up in front of him and shaking his head much like he did whenever Kira caught him trying to fool her into thinking that there was a unicorn frolicking in the front yard or something. “Of course not!”

Benedikt scowled and it was so pathetic and adorable that Mats took pity on him.

“Okay, okay, I was...but you know you don’t need to make basketball and run a four minute mile to impress me, right?” Mats said teasingly.

Benedikt looked down at his lap, busted, and muttered something that sounded vaguely like “I wasn’t trying to impress you...”

“Your face and your personality impress me enough,” Mats added, feeling immensely stupid immediately after he said it.

But Benedikt looked up shyly and offered Mats the tiniest of grins. “Same. And your hair, too.”

\-----

The rest of the evening went well. Mats went on StubHub and picked up some less-than-two-hundred-dollar tickets in section 228 (he considered floor tickets which were cheaper, but they were all the way in the back and Benedikt pointed out that since it was football field, there would be no slant and little Kira wouldn’t be able to see anything unless one of them held her on their shoulders the whole time -- “and she’ll probably want to dance,” added Mats intelligently).

After the tickets had been purchased, Mats agreed to meet Benedikt at his house at 4 PM for a run, after which they’d have enough time to shower and eat something and brace themselves for hoards of screaming girls before heading to the concert.

After Mats dropped Benedikt off and they said their goodbyes, he practically skipped up his walkway he was so happy and nearly fell flat on his face tripping over a garden hose -- he glanced quickly over his shoulder to make sure Mats had left but he hadn’t and Benedikt flipped him off upon seeing his gleeful face and hearing his laughter ringing through the open window.

But the second the entered his house, his good mood faded faster than he could kick off his shoes.

He could see his mom in her office across the hall and his dad in the living room, watching football on television with a bowl of pasta in his lap. When he heard Benedikt come in, he looked up and Benedikt gulped.

He’d sort-of-maybe forgotten about the fact that he was grounded.

“Hi, Benedikt,” Mr. Höwedes greeted him and turned back to the television, code for ‘you’re in trouble but I’m too busy watching television to yell at you right now’. “Where have you been?”

He could tell him that he’d been at choir auditions and make him feel guilty for forgetting, yet again, about his activities. Or he could tell the truth and explain that he’d been out with Mats Hummels, a boy whose twin brother died in a fire 12 years ago and who needed a little bit of comfort because he’d just had to explain all this to Benedikt and relive it.

Benedikt settled for something in between; not telling the full truth because his dad didn’t need to know but not telling a lie, either. Benedikt refused to lie about Mats; there was nothing to be ashamed of.

“I was out with a friend,” he explained, moving away from the front door to escape upstairs to his room.

“Did you forget you were grounded?”

“No, actually. I figured since you and mom had disappeared off somewhere all day without telling me that you didn’t really care what I did,” Benedikt said, his voice rising a notch.

“I thought you were sick, so I trusted that you’d be staying home,” Mr. Höwedes shot back as Benedikt began to ascend the stairs. “Do not go upstairs, Benedikt! I’m not finished talking to you.”

Benedikt whirled around and smacked the railing. “You’re just watching TV! You’re not talking to me! If you want to talk to me then why don’t you look at me?!”

Mr. Höwedes set down his pasta bowl, reached for the remote and shut off the television, giving his full attention to his son. “Come here, please.”

Benedikt huffed as dramatically as he could and muttered a few choice words under his breath before taking the armchair across from his dad, slouching over and resting his elbows on his legs as soon as he was seated. At the same, his mom left her office and stood in the opening to the living room, silently as if intimidated, but still there.

 _Wow,_ Benedikt thought. _We’re all in the same room. Christmas has come early._

“I’m wanting to know why there’s six or seven broken dishes on the kitchen floor.”

Benedikt’s chest took a free-fall at that. He’d completely forgotten about Mats having to break glass.

“I can clean it up,” he mumbled.

“Yes, you are going to clean it up. But I asked why it is there,” his dad drawled.

“I don’t know,” Benedikt replied.

Mr. Höwedes’ eyebrows shot up towards his receding hairline. “You don’t know.”

“No idea,” repeated Benedikt solidly. He didn’t care if he was grounded for a month; he was not going to let anyone know how upset Mats had been because he knew Mats would want to keep it between the two of them. “Maybe there was an earthquake.”

“I’m not an idiot, Benedikt.”

“Then why can’t you seem to figure out that I was the one who broke the dishes? Maybe it’s because I’m sick of you leaving me alone all the time and not showing up to any of my concerts or meets. Maybe I’m just sick of you acting like I’m the biggest nuisance in your life!” Benedikt threw his dad a look of deep disgust and leapt up from his chair, barreling through the hallway and throwing the closet door open in search of a broom and dustpan.

“Put on some shoes, please, Benedikt. I don’t want you to cut your feet. And there’s spaghetti and meatballs in the pot on the stove if you want some,” his mom called after him.

“Do the dishes too, please, Benedikt!” his dad barked as if Benedikt had not just called him out and was simply leaving the room after all the Christmas presents had been opened and it was time to disperse.

Benedikt left his shoes off in pure spite of his dad, and he was rewarded with a large shard of glass shooting in between his big and second toes. He bit back a cry as it wedged itself painfully into his skin and grimaced as he yanked it out, dropping it into the dustpan. Half a second later, bright red blood was gushing out in between his toes and seeping across the floor wherever he limped, sweeping up Mats’ broken glass and dumping it into a plastic grocery bag to throw away.

When he was about halfway through with the mess, Benedikt could no longer stand the pain searing through his left foot and collapsed into a chair with a paper towel in hand. He balanced his heel on the edge of the chair and pressed the towel into his foot, sucking in deep breaths. The last thing he wanted was for his mom or dad to come running into the kitchen and see their precious floor stained with blood.

Benedikt swore under his breath after the towel soaked through within 15 seconds. He couldn’t blame Mats for this; he had been rash and foolish to walk barefoot through the kitchen, feeling stupidly invincible. Yet he couldn’t help but feel a little irritation at Mats as the poster and markers sat beside him, his foot screaming in agony.

He thought he’d seen an improvement in Mats; the grim, sullen Mats was gone and replaced with a happy, generous Mats. But the fact remained that Mats was still refusing to help out with the project, and, more importantly, that he still had not repaid Julian. He was running away from his problems en route to Benedikt. And although Mats had opened up to Benedikt about his past, he was still somewhat reluctant to discuss anything that wasn’t superficial and eager to brush off Benedikt’s concerns, evidence to Benedikt that Mats had a little bit of pride left through all of his struggles. But as the stabbing pains in his foot began to crawl up to his ankle, Benedikt feared that perhaps Mats was becoming too dependent on him, that maybe his motivation to improve wasn’t really intrinsic.

_But love is intrinsic, isn’t it?_

He thought about what had happened in the truck. How natural it felt, and how badly it hurt when Mats had stopped. He needed Mats to fill the void in his heart that his family had left empty just as much as Mats needed him.

Mats needed more time, that was all. How far he’d come since just Thursday was incredible. It was unfair of Benedikt to expect everything to become fairy-tale perfect all at once. He thought back to the beginning of the week, when the project was assigned and he had been one-hundred percent sure that Mats wouldn’t even take out his earbuds. Mats had done so much more than just taken out his earbuds; he’d taken down the adamant shield that had hidden his true self for so long. And if he was doing it for Benedikt, then he was doing it for himself, too.

Maybe it was okay to fall in love with Mats Hummels, after all.

He noted that his foot didn’t hurt as much as it had a few seconds ago.

Benedikt’s ponderings abruptly subsided as he realized he was getting blood all over the chair as well. Sighing, he pushed himself off the chair and hopped across the kitchen to the medicine cabinet, from which he withdrew three band-aids and some wrapping. Hobbling back to the sink, he wet a fresh paper towel and did his best to clean up his foot and dry it off before piling the band-aids messily in between his toes where the glass had entered, all twisted up around each other and falling off because it is impossible to arrange a band-aid nicely on your foot like you’d do on your arm or anywhere else, really. Then he hastily wrapped his foot, grimacing at what a bad job he’d done. But it would work, pretty or not.

After that impromptu first-aid, Benedikt finished sweeping up all the glass, still not wearing shoes but being extra careful to dodge all the remaining glass and the blood he’d tracked across the floor. Once he’d manage to get all the broken glass into the grocery bag, he tied it up, double bagged it and dumped it into the trashcan, knowing very well that he should’ve taken it straight to the outside bin but he didn’t want to have to limp past his parents, put his shoes back on and go outside all over again.

When he finished cleaning up the kitchen so it no longer looked like a murder scene, Benedikt brought his poster and his iPod touch upstairs and spent the rest of the evening talking to Mats on Facebook, lounging perpendicular across his bed and tossing Jamba up and down in the air with his left hand while he typed with the other, smiling at his screen like an idiot.

_Mats Hummels:<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_kqQDCxRCzM>_

_Benedikt Höwedes: What is that_

_M: just watch it_

_B: If you’re trying to get me to watch a 1direction song again, I’m not doing it_

_M: come on you have to get ready for tomorrow_

_B: I am ready. I have my ear plugs all set_

_M: you are not funny. if u ruin this for my sister i’m never taking you anywhere ever again_

_B: Fine I’ll watch it_

_B: Why does the blond guy look like a Pokemon?_

_M: that’s nail, he’s kira’s favorite_

_B: Okay this song isn’t even proper grammar, it’s “you and ME” not “you and I”_

_B: The whole video is the exact same thing and three of them look like lions_

_B: I can’t watch this anymore_

_B: Mats I know you like that song. Don’t lie to me, you like it. That’s why you wanted me to watch_

_M: No I dont… i just wanted you to be prepared for tomorrow its better if u know the songs even if htey suck_

_B: Why did you choose that particular song then?_

_M: idk it was the first one i found and i think the only one kira knows is you dont know ur beautiful but u already know that one_

_B: Uh who said I did? And why are we taking Kira if she only knows one song? I know you like them Mats, you don’t have to lie to me it’s okay, I had a short-lived Justin Bieber stint so I understand_

_M: She’s obsessed with them she has a singing toothbrush and their pajamas i swear to god_

_B: …………………………._

_M: ………………………….._

_M: I did one more dot than u. lets make a dot tower_

_M: ._

_B: .._

_M: …_

_B: …._

_M: ….._

_B: ……_

_M: ……._

_B: …….._

_B: Axgsjjsdgh hold on dad’s been yelling at me to load the dishwasher since yesterday I gotta go_

_M: Aw. See you tomorrow :)_

_Benedikt Höwedes: Bye pumpkin <3_

_Mats Hummels: pumpkin??????_


	18. Pre-concert Preparations

Shortly before four o’clock and after completing his homework, Benedikt decided that he should get his running stuff on and rewrap his foot because Mats would be showing up soon.

His mom had gone out to run some errands but his dad was still around, working on a project in his office. Benedikt could easily escape outside and meet Mats without any confrontation, but he also felt a bit rebellious and wanted to introduce Mats to his father.

He peeled off his shirt and nearly gasped when he saw his stomach. He hadn’t forgotten about how Mats had so torturously led him on, but he never had a chance to properly examine the marks Mats had made. And marks he had made indeed. His hips were bruised with the imprints of Mats’ fingernails and the skin around his navel was sucked red and purple and sprinkled with bites.

Benedikt slowly ran his fingers over Mats’ marks, making goosebumps rise on his skin and his stomach clench tightly. He pressed on a few of them and discovered that some of them hurt. Mats had left a visible trail down from his navel to where the hair dipped into his boxers, the bruises intensifying as they came closer and closer to his cock. He shivered and his nipples hardened. He rubbed them to soften them again then quickly pulled his technical shirt over his head, shielding Mats’ marks from his greedy eyes and hands.

Benedikt hoped it wouldn’t be long before Mats’ mouth found him again.

After he had changed into a pair of mid-length shorts, he wandered into the kitchen and washed and changed the bandages on his foot. The cut looked a lot worse than it had yesterday; it was turning green and yellow and swollen so Benedikt covered it up as quickly as he could, not wanting to believe it was becoming infected and also trying to believe that it didn’t deliver a dull pain up to his ankle when he walked on it. He tried to place as little pressure on his foot as possible as he walked.

He had no idea how he was going to run. Or go to a concert, for that matter. But he had to.

He pulled on his socks and running shoes and headed outside to meet Mats. He decided he didn’t want Mats to meet his dad yet. That could wait.

Moments later, Mats’ notorious truck pulled up and he climbed out, swinging his keys around his finger as he approached Benedikt, looking cool and confident and not at all dressed to go on a run.

“What are you wearing?” Benedikt demanded the minute Mats was within earshot, crossing his arms.

“What are _you_ wearing?” Mats retorted, his eyes travelling down to the ample amount of quadricep visible above Benedikt’s knee. He licked his lips and continued to swing his key around before it flew right off his finger into Benedikt’s lawn. “Oh, shit…” he muttered as he bent down to retrieve it, his eyes still glued to what Benedikt’s running shorts failed to conceal.

Benedikt’s lip curled and he tapped his foot. “When you’re done checking out my legs, I can offer you some actual running clothes. Unless you were planning on running in skinny jeans and flip-flops.”

“Chill,” Mats chuckled as he straightened up. “I wasn’t planning on running at all.”

Benedikt made his best ‘are you kidding me?’ face.

“Although I do like the way you look in those shorts, I think it’d be even better if you were covered in sweat and red-faced to go along with the look,” Mats smirked.

Benedikt responded with his ‘I’m just going to stand here and keep tapping my foot until you stop talking’ face.

“Then again, I can make you sweaty and red-faced and you wouldn’t even have to run a foot--”

“So do you want to run or fuck? Make up your mind,” Benedikt cut in sharply.

Mats’ face melted into that same cocky, lopsided grin from last night. “Someone’s feisty today…”

Benedikt scowled and shoved him. Mats simply snickered and pulled him into a tight hug, which Benedikt did not necessarily return because he was a bit pissed but didn’t necessarily shy away from because he liked the feeling of being wrapped in Mats Hummels’ arms, pressed up against him and inhaling his incredibly odd yet endearing scent.

It was hard to believe that this was the same mysterious Mats Hummels who he had been assigned to work on a project with less than a week ago. All he had hoped for was to get through the project without either one of them killing one another, which hadn't necessarily been accomplished yet, but he had managed to fall completely and utterly in love with Mats Hummels instead.

“Can you call me that pet name you used on Facebook yesterday? I want to hear you say it,” Mats breathed into Benedikt’s ear.

“No,” Benedikt mumbled into Mats’ shoulder.

“Why not? I liked it.”

“Because you’re being a horny bitch,” Benedikt muttered at the same time he decided to pry his arms out from between his and Mats’ chests and drape them around Mats’ waist. “And you always do this to me outside in broad daylight.”

“Let go of me and let’s go inside, then,” Mats suggested.

“I need to run, though. I haven’t in a few days,” returned Benedikt. “And you smell like weed.”

“It’s my truck, I need to clean it out, especially if Kira’s going to ride in it tonight, shit…” Mats wrenched himself away from Benedikt to glance at his truck worriedly, tucking his hands into his hips.

“I’ll help you if you run with me. And,” Benedikt added in desperation, “we can take a shower together after.”

Mats whirled back around, his eyes glimmering and his lips dancing as if he’d just heard the news that marijuana and gay marriage had been legalized nationally. “Give me some clothes and let’s go.”

Benedikt rolled his eyes, but told Mats to wait there and he’d be right back with some running clothes, which he could change into in the car.

“Why can’t I just come inside?” Mats complained.

“Dad’s home,” Benedikt replied curtly. “He’s not exactly the most uplifting person in this world. You won’t be missing out on much.”

“Oh, alright,” Mats nodded his understanding. He would, after all, get to meet Mr. Höwedes once he and Benedikt were together.

\-----

Benedikt’s running clothes were a little tight on Mats, but it worked out fine because Benedikt enjoyed very much the view he had of the outline of Mats’ ass snug in his shorts as well as the dip in his back and his hip bones and navel trail and v-lines peeking out when his shirt rode up.

Mats, on the other hand, was enjoying very much the pools of perspiration gathering in the center of Benni’s back, around his armpits and upper chest and the beads rolling down his face. Mats thought he looked beautiful this way, although he really was looking forward to that shower.

Benedikt’s foot was also beginning to hurt more and more as he pounded it against the pavement, but this was probably a positive too because it slowed him down; Mats was already struggling a bit to keep up despite Benedikt’s efforts to slow down his usual pace of sub 5:30 per mile.

“Benni,” Mats panted from a few paces behind Benedikt.

 _Shit_. “Sorry, I’ll slow down…” He let Mats catch up to him again.

“No, it’s not that...you’re...I think you’re bleeding…” Mats heaved.

Benedikt dropped his gaze down to his foot and immediately stopped running, causing Mats to crash straight into his back and nearly knock him over.

Benedikt gagged.

The entire front pocket of his shoe was soaked in dark red.

“Oh, god,” he muttered, sitting down heavily on the curb to rip his shoe off. Mats sat down next to him.

“What is that?”

Benedikt closed his eyes and shook his head. Sweat was dripping into his eyes now that he was still and it stung; he lifted his shirt to wipe his face off and kept it there, the sweat-soaked roots of his tousled hair visible above the neckline of his shirt.

“What happened? Does it hurt?” Mats asked gingerly.

 _I can’t tell him,_ thought Benedikt. _He can’t know._ There was no way he was going to admit to Mats that he’d stepped on a piece of glass that Mats had broken in his hurt and frustration. Mats would feel terrible.

But it didn’t take long for Mats to figure it out for himself, especially when Benedikt was so reluctant to say anything. He felt his throat burning, not just from the strain of keeping up with Benedikt but from the pain that came with his realization.

“You didn’t...Oh god, Benni. I’m so sorry. It was my fault.”

“No,” Benedikt said into his shirt.

“No, what?” Mats inquired. When Benni failed to elaborate, he tried to pry his shirt away from his face but Benni resisted, so Mats resorted to sighing. “How are we going to get you back home?”

“I can run,” Benni said laboriously (and Mats was a tad disappointed because he was hoping they could call for a taxi or something). He let his shirt fall from his face and wiped his sweaty brow with the back of his hand. “I just didn’t want you to see what happened to my foot.”

Mats tried to say something in response, but his lungs ached from the running and he ended up coughing instead, earning a sympathetic look from Benedikt.

“Besides, I deserved it.”

Mats paused, surprised by Benni’s claim, and for a moment the only sounds to be heard were that of Mats' labored breathing. The first thing that came to his mind was ‘no you didn’t’, but instead he went with “Why do you think that?”

Benni rested his arms on his knees, eyes trained on his blood-soaked sock. Now that they had stopped moving, his face was burning with heat and he longed to tug his shoe back on and hit the road so he could get home and take a shower, wash away all the blood and clean his cut properly. “You know why.”

“If you’re talking about the things you said to me yesterday, we can call it even now. I’ve done just as worse things to you...and other people. You were only that defensive because you knew what I was capable of,” Mats said urgently. He tapped Benni’s knee with his own. “Eye for an eye?”

Benni reached for his shoe, a smile ghosting his lips. “When did you become so considerate and non-argumentative?”

“You’ve grown on me, Benedikt,” Mats said simply, helping Benni to pull his shoe on over his sticky, uncooperative sock (Benni grudgingly let him). “Now, promise me you’ll let me wrap that up when we get home because you did a real shitty job.”

\-----

The shower deal was put on hold for the time being because as much as Mats would have liked to follow through, he really didn’t want to be the receiving end of the backwash of whatever oozed out of Benni’s foot. He did, however, knock on the front door while Benni was in the shower (“Wait in the truck, I’ll be five minutes,” Benni had begged because he thought Mats could do without the enlightenment of meeting his dad) because what was Benni hiding from him?

The front door opened and a man that Mats took a wild guess at being Benni’s dad opened the door.

“Hi, I’m Mats Hummels. I’m a friend of Benedikt’s,” he said, holding out his hand and flashing his best, charming smile.

Mr. Höwedes shook his hand firmly, looking as serious as ever. “Nice to meet you, Mats.”

“Nice to meet you, too.”

Mr. Höwedes took a step back and opened the door a little wider, not exactly welcoming Mats inside but not hinting for him to leave either with his body language. “Benedikt is in the shower. You’re welcome to wait inside for him to finish.”

“Thank you.” Mats stepped over the threshold, making Mr. Höwedes appear a little uncomfortable but he had, after all, just invited Mats inside.

Benni’s dad told Mats he could wait in the living room then retreated back to his office, mumbling something about carbon emissions and presentations. Mats felt he could relate to Mr. Höwedes’ feelings on presentations -- Why had Benni been so reluctant to let Mats meet his dad? He really wasn’t so bad. A little stiff, but not bad.

While Mats was picking his fingernails, poking his tongue around his mouth and wishing Mr. Höwedes had granted him permission to turn on the television, a woman that Mats could only assume was Benni’s mother opened the front door, dropped a handful of grocery bags by the door and returned outside to finish unloading the car.

Mats stood, collected the bags and took them to the kitchen. He needed something to do, after all; he was bored. So he washed his hands.

Just as Mats was putting the milk and eggs in the refrigerator, the woman entered the kitchen and nearly threw the bags she was holding across the floor in shock.

Mats smiled. “Hi, I’m Mats Hummels. I’m Benedikt’s friend. I didn’t mean to scare you, I was just waiting for Benedikt to finish up with his shower.” He extended a hand and after a little hesitation, Mrs. Höwedes extended a grocery bag, much to Mats’ amusement. Then after realizing what she’d done, she blushed in the exact same way Benni always did. She set the bag down and tried again.

“Nice to meet you,” Mats said.

“Nice to meet you too, Mats,” she replied, offering a timid smile. She was a little curious as to why this very handsome boy was wearing her son’s running clothes but decided to let the matter slide. “I’m Benedikt’s mom.”

“That was my guess. I can help you put away the rest of these groceries, if you want?”

\-----

When Benedikt was finished with his shower (and, though he wouldn’t admit it, spent much more time than he would’ve liked choosing his outfit for the concert -- he ended up going with a pair of tan pants, a white v-neck, and a simple woven bracelet, realizing he didn’t want to draw much attention to himself at the One Direction concert in case any girls from school were there and recognized him), he went back downstairs and was just a little bit surprised to see Mats Hummels roaming around his kitchen, putting groceries away.

“ _Mats_. What are you doing? I thought you were going to wait -- wait, did you meet my dad?” Benedikt stared at him incredulously.

“And your mom.” Mats tucked an apple into the fruit bowl then faced Benedikt, grinning proudly. “Is your foot still bleeding?”

Benedikt shook his head, sending a few droplets of water onto his shirt. He was still in denial that Mats had actually blatantly ignored his request to wait for him outside and instead came knocking on the door, introduced himself to Benedikt’s parents and was now putting away _groceries_ , for god’s sake.

Benedikt couldn’t blame Mats, though. It had been quite rude of him not to invite Mats inside, whether his dad was there or not. In fact, he was glad that Mats had disobeyed him.

“Show me where your stuff is and I’ll fix it up for you,” Mats ordered.

Benedikt showed him the medicine cabinet and Mats came out with the same two things Benedikt had last night, band-aids and a wrap, but also with an ointment he claimed would prevent the cut from getting infected. Benedikt put his foot up on a chair so Mats could dress it.

Mats squeezed a dab of ointment on his finger and slapped it on Benni’s cut, using the pad of his finger to smooth it out. The ointment was cold and Mats’ finger tickled, so Benni giggled and had to hold onto the back of the chair to keep from yanking his foot away.

“Stay still!” Mats snapped.

“You’re tickling me!” Benni retorted, feeling rather giddy as he imagined those clever hands somewhere else on his body, and it didn't help that Mats was still sweaty and flushed from the run with his dark hair wet and askew and wearing _Benedikt's fucking clothes_.

Mats made an ‘enough with the bullshit’ face, ripped open a band-aid and snaked it in between Benni’s toes where the cut was, effectively covering it up without twisting the band-aid around it self. Then he expertly wrapped Benni’s foot for extra security, making it so it was still breathable but not so loose it would come off and allow Benni’s sock to rub up against the cut and make it bleed again.

“There,” he said with finality, his hand encased around Benni’s ankle. “You should be fine now. If it hurts, you tell me, okay?”

Benedikt’s mouth fell agape, the feeling of Mats’ sturdy hand around his ankle doing things to him that he wished otherwise because the last thing he needed right now was to pop a boner while wearing these pants which might’ve been, okay maybe they were, a size too small. He would never hear the end of that from Mats. “When did you become so good at...stuff?” he asked stupidly.

“I’ve had practice throughout my life. It helps that Kira’s always knocking herself out on her scooter and busting up her elbows and knees. Maybe, with my skill,” he added with an evil wink, “they’d let me be the team manager when you try out for _basketball_.”

“Shut up. I’m not trying out for basketball,” Benedikt frowned, wanting very much to allow his foot to just accidently slip and pummel Mats in the stomach.

Mats tapped Benni’s foot, indicating he could take it down now. “You seemed pretty adamant on it last night…”

Benedikt threw the tube of ointment at him. Mats raised a questioning eyebrow.

Benedikt ran a hand through his hair. “You’ve grown on me, Mats Hummels,” he finally conceded.

\-----

The moment Mats kicked open the door to his house and threw the jeans, shirt and flip-flops he’d originally been wearing over his shoulder, it was clear that he and Benedikt had entered during a full-on Kira meltdown.

“Act like a big girl or go to your room!” Mrs. Hummels was scolding a wailing Kira, who was standing in the middle of the hallway in just her Cinderella underwear, surrounded by what appeared to be the contents of an entire laundry hamper or two spread out all over the floor.

Mats’ eyes widened in horror and Benedikt looked to him for instructions.

“Let’s just wait a bit for introductions…” He took Benedikt’s elbow and led him to an open, sunlit room off to the left with a television, a Wii, lots of American Girl dolls and outfits and a low table piled with children’s books.

“Are you going to pick up all the dirty clothes that you dumped out or go to your room?” Mrs. Hummels rebuked, clearly at her wit’s end.

“I NEED MY ONE D PAJAMAS!” Kira screamed.

“Kira Madeline Hummels, you may _not_ wear pajamas if you want Matsi and Benni to take you to the concert tonight!” Mrs. Hummels returned, exasperated.

Mr. Hummels stepped in at this point. “What’s wrong with her wearing her pajamas?”

Mrs. Hummels reminded him that they were supposed to be working as a team and to please support her in this, and besides, the point was that Kira could not expect to get what she wanted by behaving like a spoiled brat.

“I really just want to wear my One D pajamas!” Kira sniffled. She was ignored, however, because her parents were now preoccupied in arguing with each other about how to handle their daughter in low voices.

Mats pursed his lips as Kira came scampering into the room, tears spilling down her cheeks and her nose running freely. She jumped face first onto the couch between Mats and Benedikt, curled up into a ball and cried openly.

“Mommy is being so mean!” she choked out as Mats scooped her up and put her on his lap. She buried her face into his chest as he ran his hand up and down her bare back, brushing her long, tangled hair out of the way.

“Shhhhh,” he soothed her gently. “It’s okay.”

Kira simply sobbed louder at this and Benedikt picked up one of the books on the table, not quite sure what else to do with himself. The way Mats was so sweet with Kira was making Benedikt fall for him and trust him even more, and lost in a swirl of wistful thinking it took him a few seconds of flipping through pages and staring uncomprehendingly at them until he realized he’d picked up a copy of the most recent Guinness World Records. While Mats comforted Kira, Benedikt learned about the person who had carried a table the longest distance with his teeth, had inserted the most needles into his head, and had the largest collection of condoms.

After Kira had calmed down a bit, Benedikt had expanded his knowledge significantly, and Silver had trotted in looking very pleased with a pair of Mats’ boxers in her mouth (Benedikt recognized them as the same ones he’d worn when they slept together), Mats suggested calmly, “Why don’t we go and put the clothes back in the hamper? I’ll help you, and maybe we can find your pajamas and since mommy will be happy with you she’ll let you wear them. Okay, little bee?”

“Okay,” Kira sniffled and wiped her eyes. She peered up at Mats, her cheeks smeared with snot and tears and her eyes glossy. “I love you, Matsi.”

Mats smiled that smile that Benedikt was sure would result in his death one day and smoothed out Kira’s dismantled hair, her pigtails falling out all over the place. “I love you too. We’re going to have fun tonight, right?”

Kira nodded and climbed off Mats’ lap, noticing Benedikt sitting on the couch as she spun around. Her face lit up immediately. “Hi, Benni! Are you excited for One D?”

“I’m probably more excited than you are,” Benedikt informed her.

Kira lowered her eyelids, inspecting Benedikt briefly, then ran out of the room squealing with her wild hair flying out behind her. Silver perked up and ran after her, dropping Mats’ boxers on the floor.

Mats made a face as he picked up his boxers. He promised Benedikt that he’d wash his clothes, Kira having turned the front of his shirt into a slobberfest and Mats’ having sweat profusely. Benedikt told him not to worry about it but Mats waved him off and followed Kira out of the room, informing Benedikt that he could come with him and Kira or stay in here or do whatever he wanted.

When did Mats Hummels become such a gentleman?

Benedikt wouldn’t have minded helping to pick up the dirty clothes, but he decided to stay and give the Hummels family their privacy to work out the pajama issue without him butting in. He did feel a tad uncomfortable sitting alone in Mats’ house while he hadn’t even been properly introduced to his parents, but he figured that both Mats and Kira had talked about him and they were probably expecting him to show up eventually to go to the concert.

He thought of what he’d witnessed when he first set foot in the house. In daylight and with everyone home (and the fact that he was actually invited this time), he hadn’t experienced the same cold, unsettling feeling he had on Thursday night. Mats’ house felt like a home, made even more homely by the fact that this was a family who argued, bickered, screamed at each other, and threw tantrums yet still managed to get along and love each other. Why couldn’t it be that way with Benedikt’s own family? They rarely ever had real arguments because real arguments only happened when both ends cared about what they were arguing about.

It was hard for Benedikt to imagine that there once had been a second little doppelganger of Mats running around. The Hummels family seemed so picture perfect that maybe it wasn’t really perfect at all. They were ignoring something, and something big. They were ignoring the fact that Mats had never really healed from that fire and from losing his twin. He may have moved on a while ago, but the scars from that day were still hurting him because of how he was taught to deal with them. Yes, Mats had proved that he had a heart, and a big one at that, but he still refused to do anything for his own good, even something as simple as finishing his homework. Mats had grown up under the impression that he could do whatever he wanted, that he didn’t have to be like the other kids because he was different from them, and no one taught him otherwise.

Benedikt’s eyes finally interpreted the world record he was currently seeing. A school in Illinois had claimed the record for most twins in a single grade at one school: 24 pairs of twins in one grade. That was a lot of twins, 48 in total. Benedikt realized that there was only one pair of twins in the eleventh grade at his school, a boy and a girl, but if he counted Mats there were three twins in total. What if that house fire had never happened and Mats’ brother...Benedikt couldn’t remember what his name was, he knew Mats had mentioned it briefly but he couldn’t remember...what if he were still here? What would that mean for Mats? Benedikt imagined he would’ve gotten irritated at people not being able to tell them apart, though sometimes he would’ve liked to take advantage of it and trick people. He would’ve had someone constantly by his side growing up whether he liked it or not, sharing birthdays, friends, toys, and teachers. Mats Hummels would’ve been part of a set if he’d still had his brother. Now he was just Mats Hummels, the stoned guy sleeping in the back of classroom.

Benedikt wanted to ask Mats more about it, but he didn’t want to bring it up if Mats didn’t want to talk about it. Mostly, he wanted to know about Kira, darling little Kira. Would she even be here if the tragedy hadn’t happened? What would happen on the day she found out that Matsi used to have a twin and her parents were forced to leave the comfort of their current life and travel back to those dark days? He found it hard to believe that Mats’ parents were simply pretending that his brother hadn’t ever existed. He thought it more likely that they had simply moved forward with their lives instead of living in the past and wishing they could change it, and he admired them for that. But if Mats felt the way he did about them, then what would happen the day he decided to confront them about it?

The burn on Mats’ arm was hardly noticeable unless you were looking for it. Benedikt didn’t think about the physical remnants of the accident or even the immediate effects as much as he thought about what impact it had on Mats as a person. Mats didn’t only lose his brother in that fire, he lost a part of himself and he grew up without it. Mats was lonely. He was lonely, and he needed someone who’d give him more than drugs and pipes. But Benedikt did notice that Mats had not been stoned since Thursday night. Perhaps he’d found something else to depend on.

 _It's me_ , Benedikt thought.

He’d already known that, but every time the realization hit him again his heart skipped several beats just like it had the first time. And every time he realized it again, it made him feel a sort of guilty happiness. But he felt it was justified in a way since, at this point, he could not picture his own life without Mats. They had been brought together in such a perfect yet fragile stroke of luck, so what did that mean about what it would take to separate them again?

He hoped that nothing would take Mats Hummels away from him.


	19. One Direction (The Wrong One)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mats, Kira, and Benedikt go to the concert and Mats and Benedikt accidentally do some erm important things in the bathroom.

Benedikt’s thoughts were interrupted when he recognized a small hand waving around in front of his face.

“Benni! Knock knock anyone home?!” a high pitched voice squealed in his ear.

Benedikt pulled out of his own little world and blinked several times to see a fresh-faced Kira standing before him expectantly, fully dressed in her One Direction pajamas and a pair of sneakers with her hair now secured in a high ponytail with a pink bow.

“Oh...ye--hi. Yeah. I’m here. Hi.” He smiled apologetically and Kira looked relieved. She tapped Benedikt’s knee twice then bounced back out of the room away from Benedikt, yelling “MOMMY! DADDY! BENNI IS AWAKE!”

Awake? How long had he been sitting there in an unresponsive trance as he meditated over his and Mats’ future?

When Kira sprung back into the room, she had a dark-haired woman and a tall, graying man with her, each looking as delighted as the other to finally be meeting the legendary Benedikt Höwedes whom they’d heard so much about from their kids. Benedikt now had absolutely no doubts as to why Mats Hummels looked like a Greek god and Kira a little princess; both of their parents were extremely good-looking.

“You must be Benni. We’ve heard so much about you,” Mrs. Hummels greeted him with a warm smile. She held out an arm and Benedikt realized that he needed to stand up to shake her hand far too late. He leapt to his feet, his cheeks burning in embarrassment as he held out his own hand, but inside of taking his hand Mrs. Hummels pulled him into a hug which Benedikt awkwardly returned after getting over the initial surprise.

“Yeah, you can call me Benni or Benedikt, either one is fine,” he managed to get out while being hugged even though his tongue was all twisted up.

Mr. Hummels was next, and for a second Benedikt thought that he was going to hug him too until he simply took his hand in an overenthusiastic handshake; Benedikt thought his shoulder might become dislocated.

“Pleasure to meet you, Benni,” Mr. Hummels gloated, letting go of his hand to thump him affectionately on the back. “I’ve heard you’re a straight-A student. Maybe you can help Mats with some of his work, I can’t remember the last time I saw a B on his report card.” He smiled.

“Oh, yeah. Of course I can. I don’t have straight As, I have some Bs too but-- I guess I’m a pretty good student, I’m pretty smart but so is Mats, he just-- Yeah, I’d be happy to,” Benedikt blabbered, hoping there wasn’t actual steam coming off his face he was so embarrassed.

Mr. Hummels chuckled. “You don’t smoke weed, do you?”

Benedikt’s eyes widened. “Uh, no. It tastes bad and it made me cough a lot when I--” he smacked a hand over his mouth, wondering what the hell happened to his filter.

Mr. Hummels looked fondly at him. “I hope that attitude rubs off on Mats, I’m sick of him showing up to dinner high every night. He thinks I can’t tell but I can. I know where he hides it too, and I’m just waiting for the day where he isn’t home and I can--”

He was cut off by Mrs. Hummels frantically indicating Kira, who was jumping up and down on the couch and singing.

“Not when your daughter is around, please,” she said out of the corner of her mouth before turning back to Benedikt. “Would you like anything to eat before leaving, dear? Kira is having Spongebob mac and cheese and I don’t know what Mats wants since he’s in the shower, but I’m happy to make something for you.”

Benedikt was relieved at the change in subject. “I’ll have the same thing as Mats. Thank you,” he answered politely, hoping that Mats wasn’t having Jalapeno soup or something for dinner.

Mr. and Mrs. Hummels left after the introductions, loudly discussing how wonderful Benedikt was and what a good influence he was on Mats and Kira. Kira plopped down on the couch and asked Benedikt if he wanted to play with her while Matsi was in the shower.

“Chutes and Ladders or Wii?” she prompted.

“Let’s play Chutes and Ladders,” Benedikt suggested, vague memories of the simple board game forming in his mind and making him feel nostalgic. It made him feel a little proud that Kira even considered choosing a board game over a video game.

“Okay,” Kira said happily as she skillfully tugged the game out from under a stack of other games and set it up on the floor where she sat criss-cross applesauce. Benedikt climbed off the couch and settled down across from her. “Who do you want to be?”

Benedikt chose to play as the brown haired boy and Kira the blond girl. “They don’t have one that looks like me, but that’s okay,” she explained expertly.

Playing Chutes and Ladders against a six year old turned out to be just as fun as Benedikt remembered it because it was a game based solely on luck; he didn’t need to put any effort into making sure she won, although she did win anyway because Benedikt had the worst luck and kept landing on that _one_ chute that sent you almost back to the bottom right when you were about to win. Although the motions of the game felt sweet and familiar, he had forgotten about that damn chute.

Kira giggled after the third time Benedikt slid his game-piece down the chute of death. “Matsi _never_ goes down that chute, he always thinks I don’t notice and he _cheats_.” She looked up at Benedikt with wide, serious eyes and Benedikt mirrored her. “And then when I tell him he’s _cheating_ he says it’s a stupid game for babies and gets up and stomps away.”

Benedikt bit back a laugh at the image of Mats getting frustrated over a children's board game.

“Next time that happens you should beat him up,” he advised. Mischief slowly lit up on Kira’s face Benedikt winked.

“Do you wanna go beat him up _now?_ ” she whispered excitedly.

“No, we can’t. We have to wait until you’re twenty-three,” Benedikt acknowledged. Kira looked disappointed but agreed that it was a good idea to wait until she was 23 to beat up her brother.

“Can I see your bracelet?” she asked. Benedikt held out his wrist and Kira inspected the red and white woven material. “It’s pretty. Where’d you get it?”

Benedikt shrugged. “I bought it from a stand in the city a while ago. You can have it if you want.” He took it off and slid it over Kira’s hand, delicately adjusting it so it wouldn’t slip off her smaller wrist. Kira watched with great interest, making sure to keep very still. When Benedikt had finished, she looked up slowly, her mouth wide open.

“You gave me _your_ bracelet, Benni,” she breathed in such a way that suggested Benedikt had just ended world hunger and saved all the polar bears.

“It’s a present,” justified Benedikt, smiling reassuringly at the little girl.

Kira broke into a huge, radiant grin that only someone her age could’ve managed over something as simple as a bracelet and she scrambled over the Chutes and Ladders board to suffocate Benedikt in a forceful hug that gave him a mini-heart attack as it almost knocked his head into the edge of the table. “Oh, thank you Benni!” she exclaimed.

“You’re very welcome,” he replied with difficulty, feeling a bit guilty because all he’d done was given her an old bracelet that was probably worth less than a dollar. But if it made her this happy, so be it.

She skipped off seconds later, shouting “MOMMY! LOOK AT WHAT BENNI GAVE ME!”

Benedikt was putting away Chutes and Ladders when Mats returned, dressed in a tight black t-shirt, black skinny jeans, and clean white street shoes. Benedikt thought he looked very good. He had styled his damp hair carefully and Benedikt could smell shower gel from across the room; he almost made a snide remark about it, but held his tongue because he couldn’t deny how appealing it was.

“Sorry I took so long,” Mats greeted Benedikt. “You didn’t have to stay in here, you know.”

“It was fine. I played Chutes and Ladders with your sister,” Benedikt replied smugly.

Mats made a face as they left the sun-room and headed for the kitchen. “Ugh, that fucking game.”

After Kira finished her Spongebob mac and cheese (and her mom wiped off the excess cheese on her face with a napkin) and Mats and Benedikt deli sandwiches with Jalapenos, Mr. and Mrs. Hummels said goodbye and reminded them to be safe and make sure Kira was okay and to please not spend hundreds of dollars at the merch table but that if Kira wanted a shirt to please not influence her decision and let her pick what shirt she wanted and also to make sure it fit her and also, was Mats sure that he had the tickets?

“Yes, yes,” Mats said impatiently as it was now past six o’clock and the opening act, which was some Australian punk group Benedikt had never heard of, went on at seven. “We’ll be safe. Got it. See ya.”

They piled into Mats’ truck, Kira in the middle, and Mats wasted no time in slamming on the gas and speeding off, making sudden stops and starts and dizzying turns that had Benedikt crossing his fingers they’d reach the highway soon for a smoother ride because he had only just recovered from being sick, after all.

About five minutes into the ride, Kira wrinkled her nose and waved her hand in front of it. “It smells yucky in here,” she declared.

“It’s probably just you,” Mats said distractedly, looking over his shoulder before making a tricky lane switch that made Benedikt clamp his mouth shut. “No offense.”

Kira huffed, clearly offended and turned to Benedikt to confirm that she didn’t smell yucky. But instead of enlisting his support, alarm appeared on her young face and she jumped around in her seat, tapping urgently on Mats’ arm.

“Matsi! Slow down, you’re going to make Benni sick!” she exclaimed.

“Get _off_ me,” Mats growled. “I’m going to crash if you keep hanging onto my arm and then we’ll all die and we won’t be able to see One D.”

Kira snapped forward again, her arms glued to her sides and Mats took the opportunity to get a glance at Benedikt, who was in fact looking a little green. “You can probably find a bag under the seat, if you need one,” he informed Benedikt.

Benedikt nodded, afraid to open his mouth.

“Get him a bag, Kira,” Mats demanded and Kira immediately leaned over to fish through all the empty food containers and cups to find a plastic bag. It wasn’t hard to find one and once she had, she dropped it tentatively in Benedikt’s lap, eyeing him nervously and scooted a little closer to her brother.

Benedikt held the bag open, feeling very ashamed especially for grossing Kira out and wondering if he was ever going to stop being sick and injured around Mats or if this was some sign from the gods above that they weren’t meant to be together (his foot, however, had stopped stinging ever since Mats had applied the ointment and wrapped it up properly, giving him some cushion).

Mats and Kira continued to bicker on the way to the highway, Mats slamming her with an age-appropriate insult and Kira practically jumping to reply with ‘I know you are but what am I?’, a smart smile spread across her face. Mats did end up easing up his driving and Benedikt’s nausea subsided, so he decided to drop in his two-cents about the ‘your truck smells no you smell’ argument.

“Hey Kira,” he said matter-of-factly, folding up the plastic KFC bag he’d been given. “Did you know that Matsi uses your shampoo? He can’t use the argument that you smell bad if you two smell the same, because then he’s just saying that _he_ smells bad.”

Mats shot Benedikt daggers.

“ _Mats!_ You can’t use MY shampoo, it’s for _girls_! I’m telling mommy when we get home!” Kira scolded him indignantly, kicking her feet up and down as a way to let out her frustration because she was very keen on Mats not crashing the car and killing all of them on account of the important commitment they had tonight.

Benedikt had to sink his teeth into his bottom lip to keep from laughing.

“Do not tell her anything,” Mats growled, less concerned about getting reprimanded for using his sister’s shampoo but more concerned about the secret getting out that he maybe-sort-of-okay-he-did like the smell of feminine bath products more than men’s. “If you say anything, I’ll cut off all your dolls’ hair and dye their skin green.”

“Fine. I don’t care. Dolls are boring. Plus, I already cut some their of hair when I was practicing to be a salon lady, so ha!” Kira stuck her tongue out.

“Yeah, joke’s on you, Hummels,” Benedikt added.

Mats flipped him off behind Kira’s back. “You do realize I’m the one driving, Höwedes.”

Benedikt shot back with, “and I’m the one who will accidentally miss the bag and vomit all over your truck,” which prompted Kira to stiffen up again and shift towards an enraged Mats for the second time.

“Look, you’re _scaring_ her,” Mats wheedled as he draped an arm around his sister and pulled her into his side.

“No,” Kira piped up. “I’m not scared of Benni, I’m scared of Matsi getting mad because he’s like a grizzly bear when he’s mad.”

Benedikt snorted, but upon realizing how serious Kira was being he assured her that he was not going to make Mats angry because he didn’t want to see Mats turn into a grizzly bear either. And the more he thought about it, the more he realized how true that really was; he did not want to witness Mats Hummels in a full-blown rage, yet he found himself imagining what that could possibly be like anyway. If it was enough to scare Kira, who was as tough as they get, then it must’ve been bad.

For the rest of the ride, Mats turned on the radio (Kira wanted to listen to One Direction but he pointed out that they were about to listen to the _real_ One Direction for two hours and she would get sick of them) and Benedikt absentmindedly sang along, looking out the window.

Mats shushed Kira every time she asked 'are we there yet?' or started to talk about ponies or her favorite Mario character (which turned out to be Toad). He wanted to hear Benni sing because he doubted he’d have the opportunity again soon.

But he still held onto the fantasy of Benedikt singing for him one day.

\-----

Benedikt and the Hummels siblings were among the most unusual groups of people to be navigating the jam-packed stadium at the One Direction concert. By far, the most common sighting was that of four or five teenage girls wearing high-waisted shorts and crop tops with their designated 1D member’s name and birth year handwritten across the back. There were some younger girls with their parents, who looked none too thrilled to be here. A less common grouping was an older girl who’d ditched the handmade crop top and instead dragged along a boyfriend. But Benedikt was almost one hundred percent sure that he and Mats Hummels were the only two teenage males who had come here with one another, let alone the fact that Kira also was apparently the youngest person here. It already wasn’t helping that both Mats and Benedikt were significantly taller than the majority of the crowd, which drew them natural attention, but also the handmade-crop-top-girls took specific note of this arrangement. More often than not when Mats and Benedikt (with Kira in between them, her small hands safely latched in Benedikt’s right and Mats’ left) passed by one of these groups, they would stare and giggle at the both of them but particularly at Mats. Benedikt would smile awkwardly at them (which simply prompted more giggles) but Mats would return with a rather non-appealing glare.

“I don’t like the way they’re looking at you,” Mats hissed in Benedikt’s ear once they were walking besides each other again, Mats having lifted Kira up for a piggyback ride in fear of her being trampled by hoards of crazed, hormonal teenage girls if there was a rumor that Harry Styles was hanging out by the bathroom outside section 113.

“They’re looking at _you_ , Mats,” Benedikt sighed. Not that he was jealous of the attention Mats was getting or anything, especially since Mats had just indicated that he might’ve been a little jealous. But it’s just that Mats Hummels was so gorgeous without even trying to be and it was a little frustrating at times for Benedikt, who wouldn’t turn away the opportunity if a magic fairy flew down and offered to change a few of his features.

“Don’t smile at them. You’re mine,” Mats practically growled and it was a little unsettling to Benedikt but also made him a tad light-headed because _what did Mats Hummels just say?_

“I don’t _belong_ to you. We’re not even together,” he pointed out, trying to sound casual and confident but it came out more as a passive remark.

Benedikt felt a hard flick on his arm and turned to face Mats, whose pupils were so dilated that his eyes appeared black and not their usual shade of rich brown. The spot where Mats had made impact kept pulsing even without further contact. Mats broke into a crooked grin and said, “We are now,” before winking and facing forwards again.

Benedikt’s mouth dropped to the floor.

Well, that was certainly one way to get together. Apparently, Mats had figured out his previous efforts to form a mutual decision were not working so he went for the ‘surprise, you’re my boyfriend now’ method instead.

It was hard to say no to that. And at this point, Benedikt really didn’t mind. Being Mats Hummels’ boyfriend couldn’t possibly be that bad. So it was on that Sunday night at a One Direction concert less than a week after they had started talking to each other and less than four days of not hating each other’s guts, thank you very much, that Mats Hummels and Benedikt Höwedes became a couple.

“You’re very cute, you know that?” Mats half-whispered, half-shouted and Benedikt felt his face on fire but also his cheeks hurting because he was smiling so much.

Benedikt was trying (and failing) to come up with a sarcastic, snarky comment to shoot back at Mats when Kira decided to make her presence known by shrieking excitedly, practically choking Mats from squeezing his neck so hard and leaping off his back. She weaved through the crowd and galloped towards the merch table in her 1D pajamas.

“Kira!” Mats called after her in frustration, rubbing his neck. “Come back here!”

Benedikt devoted all his attention to following her with his eyes so she wouldn't get swept away and lost amidst the sea of overexcited concert-goers.

“Fuck, she’s gonna get flattened,” Mats groaned as he took off after her. It was much more difficult for him to get through the crowd than Kira, however, so he ended up just elbowing people out of the way to clear a path for himself. Benedikt rolled his eyes and shook his head, admiring Mats’ protectiveness towards his sister but wishing he’d be a little less...aggressive because some of the parents with the eight-year-olds looked a little taken aback as he paraded by.

Benedikt caught up with Mats and Kira while they were waiting in line (which wasn’t really a proper line at all as much as it was an aggressive conglomeration), holding a good-natured discussion about which t-shirt Kira should get.

“I want the purple one! You’re a meanie!” Kira was saying and stamping her foot, looking up angrily at Mats.

“That’s hideous,” Mats told her. “It’s the ugliest thing I’ve ever seen. No one will like you if wear it.”

Kira put her hands on her hips. “No it _isn’t_!”

Mats pointed to a black shirt on display, which simply had the tour dates listed on the back and album cover on the front. Benedikt had to agree he preferred that one to the bright purple one which featured the faces of all five members across an unsettling montage that Kira was interested in. “Why don’t you get that one? If you do, then Benni and I can get them too and we’ll all be matching. But Benni and I don’t want the purple one so if you got it, then you’d have to wear it all by yourself.”

Benedikt nudged Mats’ side to get his attention. “When did I become involved in this deal?” he asked, half-amused and half-horrified as he pictured himself and Mats in identical One Direction shirts showing up to present their project tomorrow.

Mats shot him a ‘just go with it, we can donate them to a good cause after tonight’ look.

“Anything for you, _pumpkin_ ,” he replied, smirking and feeling extremely proud of himself for that one.

“That’s more like it, babe,” Mats said in a low voice. Then, he lowered his voice even more and, leaning in close, said, “I hope you didn’t think I was kidding when I said you were mine now.”

Benedikt’s heart was already hammering against his ribcage at a certain word, but his stomach jolted up towards throat as he was once again reminded that he and Mats Hummels might actually be a real couple now, even though he was the one who had called such a thing off originally. That and the fact that they were at a fucking One Direction concert for god's sake and the atmosphere was so dense and static that Benedikt didn't quite know what was happening to him or what he was saying, but he did know that this was the happiest he'd felt in a long time.

“I know.” Benedikt had spoken so quietly that even though he was right next to Mats’ ear his voice was swallowed up by the crowd and he doubted Mats had heard him. But Mats understood all the same. His eyes shone brightly as he studied Benedikt and Benedikt’s mouth twitched for a second until they were interrupted by Kira, who was tapping fiercely on Mats’ arm.

“It’s our turn, Matsi! Pay attention!” she chirped.

“Did you decide on which one you want?” Mats inquired while the woman at the merch table gave them the evil eye for not having already decided and taking too much time because there were 50 mob-worthy teenage girls behind them.

“The purple one,” said Kira firmly.

“A purple shirt in a kid’s small and two black shirts in adult large,” Mats told the woman. She nodded curtly then spun around to dig through the boxes for their shirts.

Benedikt didn’t have the heart to tell Mats that he had just wasted $40 on a shirt for him because he probably wouldn’t even wear it to sleep when no one else was home. Mats tossed him one of the black shirts and he caught it, holding it up to examine it and concluding that this was the last situation in the world he’d ever thought he’d be in.

But five minutes later in the men’s bathroom (which they had all to themselves save for Kira, who had been instructed to wait by the sinks for them), Benedikt found himself and Mats locked in a stall together, Mats having changed his shirt quickly enough so Benedikt’s eyes couldn’t linger too long but Benedikt was still shirtless, the marks and bruises Mats had given him on full display, outright refusing to put on a shirt that said ‘One Direction’ in any shape or form. Mats took this as an invitation to force the shirt over Benedikt’s head and when he struggled, to tickle his bare skin until he was laughing so hard that his stomach hurt and he was screaming loudly enough for Mats to back off.

“Jesus Christ, can you be quiet?! My little sister is in here!” he snarled.

Benedikt’s laughter had turned silent, the shirt hanging around his neck. His face glowed a bright pink and he was doubled over clutching his stomach, trying to say something but it came out as a croak instead.

“What? Are you going to piss your pants?”

Benedikt nodded slowly, tears now running down his cheeks and Mats leapt forward in absolute horror to yank his zipper down. He grabbed Benedikt’s hips and spun him around to face the toilet and god, Benedikt’s skin was so hot and it felt so fucking good that he couldn’t help inching forward a little and pressing his chest against Benedikt’s fiery back. The heat sent pulsations through his own body straight down to his cock and he felt it stiffening against Benni’s ass, his groin tightening and his thighs throbbing with desire. Before he knew it, his hands had snaked themselves around to Benni’s cock to fondle with it and the last thing on earth he cared about right now was Benni pissing all over his hands.

Benni moaned loudly and his head fell back. Mats took a mouthful of his soft, sweet hair and sucked on it, the scent of Benni’s shampoo filling his nose, the sweat gathering on Benni’s bare back soaking through his t-shirt.

“Fuck, Mats,” Benedikt groaned. “Fuck me.”

All Mats wanted to do in this moment was rip off Benni’s pants and do as he was told, but despite the haze forming in his brain he still retained some of his sense and remembered that 1) his six-year-old sister was still in the bathroom and had probably already heard enough to scar her for a lifetime and 2) he had neither lube nor a condom, so the words ‘bad idea’ were written all over the place.

“Not now, babe,” he hissed into Benedikt’s hair, but he made up for it by wrapping his hand around Benni’s cock and pumping it in a slow, teasing way before Benedikt was whining and on his tiptoes from the torture and Mats intensified the pace, figuring that Benni may not end up pissing on his hands after all because he was about to come undone instead.

Mats pumped one final time, holding on for a little longer then quickly loosening his hold and moving down Benni’s length to catch the hot liquid he spilled, the sound of Benni’s unrestrained moans filling his ears.

“Turn around,” Mats panted, needing to see Benni’s beautiful face is this vulnerability. He could hardly restrain his own need, but it wasn’t hard to recognize how little experience Benni had and he didn’t want to make Benni do anything he wasn’t comfortable with. Just because Mats had gone around and fucked anyone who’d let him just for the hell of it and been to the moon and back before he turned 17, that didn’t mean Benedikt was ready for anything. Benedikt was too precious to force anything on; Benedikt was different from anyone he’d ever met and the first person he’d ever felt something for. If they were going to have sex, he wanted it to be about both of them. He didn’t want to lose Benedikt, he wanted to bring Benedikt closer.

And Benedikt turned around, his cock shimmering with the evidence of his orgasm and his face wet with perspiration, pink with fatigue and his eyes and quivering lips pleading, begging for something. Mats’ eyes flickered back and forth between the marks on Benni’s stomach he had made and his beseeching stare.

After a moment of cat-and-mouse, Mats brought his hands to his mouth and licked Benni’s orgasm off his fingers, Benni’s unique taste spreading to every inch of his mouth and trickling down his throat. “Do you want to taste yourself?” he asked gruffly.

Benni didn’t acknowledge Mats’ offer in any way, but Mats brought two fingers to his mouth anyway and poked them in. He closed his eyes as he felt Benni’s tongue swathing around his fingers, the sensation causing his cock to harden even more. As Benni clamped his lips over Mats’ fingers, his labored breathing abruptly cut off and the stall became silent.

“First time? You like it?” Mats purred, his eyes flickering open.

Benni nodded and Mats felt a surge at being the first and only one to ever make Benni feel like this. Benni kept sucking on Mats’ fingers even after he’d sucked them clean, then he moved his hands to Mats’ waist and began clumsily prying his jeans and boxers down his legs, taking care to brush his trembling hands over Mats’ erection.

Mats’ heart rate increased exponentially, sparks running through his blood and across his sensitive skin. He pried his fingers from Benni’s mouth and wrapped a hand around both of Benni’s eager wrists, which were already halfway down his thighs.

“No Mats, let me.” He dropped to his knees before Mats could stop him and wrenched his hands away, tugging Mats’ jeans down the rest of the way until they pooled around his feet and his excited cock was on full display.

“Are you sure?” Mats asked only halfheartedly, his eyes already beginning to close again as Benedikt nosed between his thighs, pushing him back into the stall door and hitting it with a resounding thump and rattling the lock.

Benedikt had no time to answer as he was already trailing wet, sloppy kisses up the inside of Mats’ thigh, sucking at his toned skin.

“Benni…” Mats gasped, the throbbing in his cock becoming unbearable and he needed Benedikt’s mouth around him as soon as possible. He dug his fingers into Benedikt’s hair, finding the spot he had sucked wet and trailing his fingers along Benni’s sweaty roots. He abruptly grabbed a fistful and pulled it as soon as Benedikt hit a sensitive spot right next to his cock, nibbling at it lightly then shifting over to begin lapping at Mats’ tip.

Mats emitted a throaty groan as Benni moved his mouth over him, applying just the right amount of pressure to drive Mats crazy and swirling his tongue around like a paintbrush. Mats jerked his hips forward into Benni and moved further down his throat, causing Benni to emit a low groan and send chilling vibrations through Mats’ cock and all the way up his spine.

“Fuck, Benni,” Mats rasped and he bucked his hips even further as he felt the pressure building up in his stomach. Benni covered what he couldn’t with his fists, pumping in a slow, torturous manner as his mouth worked in perfect sync. Mats bit down on his lip and squeezed his eyes even tighter shut to keep from shouting as Benni moved faster and harder until he could hold on no longer. Without a forceful gasp of Benni’s name, he released down his throat and his eyes flew open. He had to see Benni around him before it was too late, he shouldn’t have even closed his eyes in the first place because this was the most fucking beautiful thing he would ever see, Benni’s wide, glimmering eyes staring up at him and his mouth full of cock for a split second until he pulled away, gagging.

Mats immediately knelt down beside him and held out his cupped hands in front of Benni. Benni leaned forward, sputtering and retching into Mats’ hands until he could breathe properly again, albeit heavily. Mats tried to ignore the burning ache in his chest as he watched Benni spit him out, reject him. Every inch of him, of both of them, was exhausted and spent in the best way possible but he couldn’t bear to see it end with Benni hurting.

“I’m sorry…” Benni choked out, seeing the hurt on Mats’ face, the pain reflected from his own. “I couldn’t... swallow it...”

Mats simply nodded and wiped his hands off on the roll of toilet paper, swallowing thickly and trying to find the strength to do something else, anything. He turned and faced Benni again, who was now looking at the ground and resting with his hands on his knees.

Mats took in a few deep breaths so his voice would be strong when he spoke, not weak and exhausted like how he felt inside. “You weren’t ready.” A statement, not a question.

Benni squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head, sending a bead of perspiration rolling down his face. Mats felt his heart shattering into a million pieces at that sight alone, the purest pain and regret that Benedikt was experiencing. Mats fell against his body, sloppily draping his arm around Benedikt’s still-burning torso and he murmured over and over again “it’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay…” until he was sure that Benedikt believed him.

“I’m sorry,” Benedikt whimpered once more.

“It’s okay. I just want you to be okay,” Mats breathed. “You’re okay.”

“I’m okay,” Benedikt asserted, his voice gathering a little strength. “I’m okay.”

“You’re okay,” Mats repeated, soothing his hand up and down Benni’s tender back. “I’m okay, too.”

“We’re okay?” Benedikt asked timidly.

“Yes,” hummed Mats. “We’re okay.”

They stayed quiet for several seconds, letting their breathing return to normal and their bodies cool down. When an unknown amount of time had passed, Mats lifted himself and inquired gently, “You ready? We need to go.”

“Yeah.”

“Alright. Don’t forget to button your pants and put your shirt on,” Mats reminded him as he stood and pulled his own jeans back up.

“I still have to pee, I’ll stay in here.”

“Okay, I’ll wait outside for you.” And with that, Mats crumpled up his old shirt in his fist, stuffed it half in his back pocket, and slipped out of the stall. He breathed in the cool air outside the confined area of the stall and his brain started to process things other than Benedikt Höwedes again. This first thing he noticed was the music and the fact that the corridors were now quiet. The opening act had taken the stage.

“Shit,” he mouthed as he remembered Kira waiting by the sinks for him. Fortunately, everything had happened within a relatively short span of time and he found Kira right where he’d left her, looking bored and impatient but otherwise very much in the same spot. She had taken up to tugging strands of hair out of her ponytail for entertainment and as a result, half of her ponytail was now loafing around her face and the other half had succumbed to a limp gathering at the back of her head.

“Where’s Benni?” Kira wondered the moment she saw Mats approaching.

“He’s going potty.” Mats washed his hands at the sink, examining himself in the mirror and determining that he looked pretty good for having just received the best blowjob he’d ever gotten -- that he couldn’t deny, although he couldn’t blink away the image of Benni on his knees, scared and confused after realizing what he’d just done.

Mats shouldn’t have let him do that. He wasn’t ready.

“Is he finished yet? I’m kinda bored,” Kira noted, swinging her arms back and forth and beginning to spin around in circles.

“Almost,” Mats told her, hoping it wasn’t a fib. He turned off the sink and leaned forward to pick at a tiny spot on his chin. “Do you want to go too before we go sit in our seats?”

“No!” Kira sang as she spun faster and faster until she crashed into Mats’ legs and tumbled over onto the floor, giggling.

“Okay, goofball,” Mats chuckled. He rinsed his fingers off once more then bent over to lift Kira back to her feet.

Where was Benedikt?

Leading a squirming Kira with his hand, Mats wandered over to the other side of the bathroom again, hoping to find Benedikt on his way. He didn’t. Benedikt was nowhere to be seen, except for his shoes and just-an-inch-short pants visible underneath the door of the stall he and Mats had shared, facing the next stall over as if he were leaning against the divider.

Mats swallowed a lump that rose in his throat. Benedikt wasn’t going to the bathroom -- he was avoiding Mats.

“Benni? You coming?” he called, trying to sound as casual and confident as he could and not the guilty, nervous piece of shit he felt like. He chewed his lip as he watched Benni’s feet rotate towards the door and heard the lock opening as if in slow motion.

Benedikt emerged from the stall sheepishly and shuffled towards Mats and Kira, having dressed into his concert t-shirt with the white one underneath. He was still rather flushed and tousle-haired from Mats’ hands, not to mention his slightly puffy lips, but otherwise he appeared to be fine. Not upset. He was fine, maybe even a little happy.

Mats smirked. “I see you’ve put on your shirt.”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Benedikt mumbled, biting back a grin.

“So all that fuss for nothing?” Mats bumped him with his free side as he turned around.

Benedikt muttered something about having to wash his hands, and after doing so, they exited the bathroom and entered the near-deserted hallways save for a few stragglers, side by side, not really talking but still together.

Kira prodded Mats’ forearm and proceeded to ask if One D had already started. He explained to her that it was only the opening act and that they had a while to wait, but that she could play the zombie game on his phone while they were waiting if she didn’t like the opener.

It turned out, however, that Kira did like the opening band, 5 Seconds of Summer. After squeezing past the people in their row to get to their seats, lyrics pertaining to something about American Apparel underwear blaring in their ears, Mats and Benedikt sat down immediately on either side of Kira but she was up on her feet, jumping up and down and out-dancing all the die-hard fans in the section (not to mention the guys putting the show on on stage). Mats and Benedikt caught each other’s eyes, both equally impressed with the spunky little girl.

“Kira!” Mats shouted over the screaming as the underwear song ended (if this was how loud it was for the _opener_ , Benedikt was one hundred percent sure he’d be deaf point seven seconds after One D took the stage). “You’re going to poop yourself out if you keep jumping up and down like that!”

“It’s funnnnn!” Kira screeched back, still dancing like a champ even though the song had ended.

Mats ended up having to grab her from behind and wrestle her into her seat and bribe her with the zombie game to save some energy. As 5 Seconds of Summer disappeared off the stage, the stadium lights came back to life and Kira became immersed in ferociously tapping the screen in order to kill all the zombies and save the unicorns and kitties, her tongue poking out the corner of her mouth in intense concentration.

The atmosphere in the stadium was electric, it was packed to the brim in its great entirety even as people filed out into the corridors for pizza and french fries; Benedikt found it hard to even think, and it took him a while to realize that Mats was trying to get his attention. He shook his head to get the blood flowing again and figured out that Mats was asking him if he wanted anything from the concessions because he was going to get some chicken tenders and nachos and drinks for himself and Kira.

“No thanks,” Benedikt said automatically, though he was starting to get a little hungry again.

“You sure? You can have some of ours if you change your mind,” Mats said loudly over the buzz as he got up from his seat.

“Get me a slice of pizza,” Benedikt caved, and Mats took a great deliberate effort to rub against Benedikt’s legs as he climbed past, assuring Benedikt he’d come back with two.

\-----

The concert turned out to be pretty enjoyable, though Benedikt found the crowd to be more fascinating than the actual performance. He’d never seen this many people in one place before, and the majority of them crazed by the same infatuation, all screaming at the same time and waving colorful lights signs (some of which made him grateful that Kira’s vocabulary skills were not too advanced yet). It was incredible and a little frightening as well. Kira lasted about six songs before she was wiped and collapsed onto Mats’ lap; Mats hitched her up and moved into her old seat so he was next to Benedikt.

The only songs he recognized were the that’s what makes you beautiful song and the one Mats had made him listen to. When Niall (Kira enthusiastically pointed him out on the big screen every time he appeared there) opened up the lyrics for that one, Mats immediately turned to face Benedikt. Benedikt pretended he didn’t notice, staring intently at Liam on the big screen as he sang about silence and sound and wrong and right.

“Don’t ignore me.” The voice in his ear made him jump in surprise; he’d grown sensitive to any sound under 150 Decibels.

“He wants to kiss you, Benni!” Kira shouted and Benedikt could practically feel Mats’ embarrassment; he raised an eyebrow and tore his eyes away from the ever-so-romantic Zayn to focus on Mats, who looked horrified.

“Wh-what? No I don’t! I was just--” Mats stammered while Kira’s eyes drifted dreamily between the two of them with a shit eating grin on her face, proud of making her brother stumble.

Benedikt leaned in close so that their noses brushed. He didn’t know when the fire inside him had ignited, but somewhere between a ballad and an ‘80s throwback, he’d forgotten all about how unsure he’d felt in the bathroom hours ago and completely set aside all concerns about anything and everything.

“You’re acting pretty shy for someone who just jacked me off without even asking.”

Benedikt thought he saw a flash of apprehension in Mats’ eyes, but it was gone before he could be sure it wasn’t just his imagination.

“KISS!” Kira shrieked, clearly having rested enough. She was on her feet again, hopping from one foot to the other and Benedikt found that even if the stadium hadn’t drowned her voice out, he wouldn’t have pulled away. Mats had had plenty of turns; now it was Benedikt’s.

But before Benedikt could do anything, Mats was gone. He blinked and Mats was back to facing forward, one of his legs moving rapidly up and down as he tapped his foot, his arms folded across his chest. Benedikt glanced at Kira, who looked thoroughly disappointed, but she shook it off quickly and was enraptured with whatever special effect was happening on stage before Benedikt could figure out what the hell just happened.


	20. Night Changes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things begin to go downhill..

Not much conversation was necessary as the concert ended and Benedikt, Mats and Kira shuffled along with the rest of the (rather exuberant) crowd out of the stadium and into an even bigger crowd once they got outside.

After trudging along the packed sidewalk for nearly 15 minutes, Kira had begun rubbing her eyes and swaying from side to side so Mats picked her up again. She fell asleep promptly, clinging to Mats like a koala. Mats and Benedikt continued to walk in silence for the next half hour, the crowd gradually thinning out and growing quieter to reveal the typical sounds of the city at late night. Their only communication took place halfway through the trek to the parking garage when Benedikt offered to take Kira and Mats hoisted her over without a word. The exchange rattled her a little bit, but Benedikt ran a hand soothingly up and down her back just as he’d seen Mats doing earlier and she nuzzled into crook of his neck, sound asleep once more.

The parking garage was the next transition to silence. The only audible noises were that of their echoing footsteps, and even that seemed muffled after the roar of the concert. It rushed past Benedikt’s ears in ringing waves of unfamiliarity. Kira felt heavy in his arms and made him feel sleepy, his head pounding in a sporadic rhythm. Mats unlocked the truck and climbed in, still not having spoken a word to Benedikt.

Benedikt hitched Kira up his torso and freed one arm in order to open the passenger door. Mats’ unfaltering gaze was the first thing he encountered before he climbed in after Mats.

“You can wake her up,” Mats said flatly, his voice rusty as if it hadn’t been used in a while.

Benedikt shook his head, locking eyes with Mats. If he wanted to play this game, so be it. As gingerly as he could, he peeled Kira off of him and lowered her onto the middle seat, buckling her seatbelt as if handling a fragile object. Then he stepped in and closed the door as noiselessly as possible, enlisting the final stage of the pressing silence on his eardrums.

He didn’t know how long the silence lasted. Kira’s soft breathing was drowned out by the ringing in his ears, and Mats was still. He hadn’t even started the ignition yet. The only way he knew the envelope of silence ended was when he yawned, causing one of his ears to pop and send a rush of blood through, unblocking his hearing.

“Are you mad at me for trying to kiss you?” Benedikt finally spoke, quietly but blatantly.

“Why the fuck would you do that?” Mats shot back harshly, not bothering to lower his voice as Benedikt had done.

Benedikt clutched his seatbelt so hard that his hand shook. “Because I like you and I wanted to. Is there a problem with that?” he provoked.

Mats snorted bitterly. “Seeing as you nearly had a nervous breakdown after sucking my dick, I was just a bit caught off guard.”

“I said I was sorry, Mats. I’m sorry if you’re getting all butthurt about me not swallowing your semen. I shouldn’t even have taken you in my mouth in the first place, but you kinda had me all riled up, you know?” Benedikt rubbed his forehead, pinching the area between his eyes as he continued. “There’s a difference between kissing someone and having sex with them. I would have no problem having sex with you but you-- no, let me finish-- you seem to have forgotten that you hated my guts three days ago.”

“Fuck that Benni, you have no idea what you’re talking about! _You_ gave me a blowjob, it was _your_ choice, and that isn’t even real sex! I had nothing to do with it, I even asked if you were sure you wanted to do it and you insisted. Don’t you fucking dare turn this around on me, don’t you fucking dare. Why don’t you ever just admit anything was your fault?! You're a real fucking prick, you know that?” Mats retorted, the words tumbling out of his mouth in a sour, rotten mess.

Mats was right, and Benedikt knew it. And he hated not being right.

But who was he to think that he was superior to Mats in any way? Who was he to always be correcting and criticizing Mats, blaming him for everything? He wanted to help Mats see the person who was inside of him, to not be afraid to show the real Mats. Helping Mats did not mean having the upper hand on him. It did not mean he was better. It simply meant that he cared about Mats. They were equal in this relationship, and Benedikt had his own flaws and insecurities that Mats was helping him to get over.

Sometimes, though, it was hard for Benedikt to remember this. He hated not being right.

This wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair.

In between the two of them, Kira stirred. Neither of them noticed.

Benedikt loosened his grip on the seatbelt, and it was only after he loosened it that he realized he’d been clenching it so hard that it was cutting into his skin.

Mats rested his forehead on the edge of the steering wheel and covered his head with his arms.

“I don’t want to fight with you,” Benedikt sighed, scratching his thumb across the texture of the seatbelt.

“Then stop fighting with me,” grumbled Mats. “You’re always picking fights with me. Just stop. I don’t want to get angry with you either but it’s hard not to when you’re so fucking arrogant. You’re not my mom, you’re not my doctor, you’re my _friend_. So treat me like one and I’ll treat you like one, okay?”

Benedikt swallowed. “Okay.”

It was quiet a moment. Kira had begun to whine softly in her sleep, sensing the unease in the truck, but Benedikt’s blood was cooling down and Mats slowly sat up again, his expression unreadable in the dark. But Benedikt could guess that even if it weren’t dark, he still wouldn’t be able to read it because he knew Mats was shutting down again.

“You know, Benni...sometimes I’m worried I’ll hurt you.”

Mats' voice was so soft that it scared Benedikt a little. “Don’t worry about me, just say what you need to. I know I get defensive but th--”

“No, I’m worried that I’ll hurt you physically. You piss me off but you’re the only person besides her that I care about. I’m going to lose control one day and I’m going to hurt you badly.” Mats turned on the engine and began to back out of the parking spot.

“I won’t let you hurt me,” Benedikt said vehemently, watching Mats out of the corner of his eye for any sign of danger. Something felt wrong, something felt terribly wrong. But he couldn’t detect what it was. “You wouldn’t let yourself do that. I know you wouldn’t.”

Mats blinked and ignored Benedikt, facing straight forward and focusing on the road ahead.

_Let him think that. He doesn’t know what I’m capable of._

The scary thing was that Mats didn’t know what Mats was capable of either. And he didn’t want to find out.

So he made a decision.

“Do you want anything to eat?” Mats asked as he pulled into the McDonald’s drive-thru several minutes later.

“No.”

“I wasn’t talking to you. I was talking to her,” Mats replied coldly, indicating Kira. The little girl had woken up and was rubbing her eyes and yawning sleepily.

“Whatever,” Benedikt responded, injecting as much carelessness into his voice as he could. But he ended up sounding upset, anyway. Mats’ mood swings were exhausting and hurtful.

“Hungry?” Mats asked gently, looking down at his sister as he spoke. She nodded.

Mats picked up a large Coke and an ice cream sundae for himself and a chicken nugget Happy Meal for Kira.

“What about Benni?” Kira wondered tiredly as Mats handed her her box, her voice sweet and sleep-laced with having just been woken up.

“He didn’t want anything. Eat your food.” Mats took a long sip of his Coke as he sped away from the drive-thru, the smell of fresh fast food filling the truck and pissing Benedikt off.

He didn’t want that shit anyway. And the fact that Mats was feeding Kira that garbage was really telling.

Benedikt rested his chin on his hand and looked out the window until he felt something warm resting on his thigh. He glanced down and there sat Kira’s tiny bag of fries. Picking it up and shaking his head, he handed it back to a hopeful-looking Kira, whose hopes visibly diminished as Benedikt denied her generosity. He ruffled her hair as an apology.

For the rest of the forty-five minute ride, Kira munched on her nuggets and fries until she fell asleep again with a mini-princess Peach figure in her lap (which had come with the Happy Meal). Mats drank his Coke, the ice rattling around inside the cup as he picked it up and put it back down, and smacked loudly on his sundae, probably just to irritate Benedikt.

Benedikt sat still and stiff, looking out the window with his hands on his knees.

When Mats finally pulled up in front of his house, Benedikt climbed out without a word and didn’t notice that Mats had climbed out too until he found himself pinned against the side of the truck, his face in Mats’ cold hands. He tried to wiggle away but Mats pressed against him harder and grazed his thumbs across Benedikt’s cheekbones and nose.

“This is exhausting Mats,” Benedikt muttered, utterly defeated as he stared into those dark eyes which he couldn’t understand right now. “Make up your mind.”

He made another break for it as Mats interpreted his words, but Mats simply kicked him forward and slammed him back into the side of the truck this time. He yelped as the pain shot up his spine into his back, Mats’ hands no longer caressing his cheeks but suppressing him mercilessly and his knee dug sharply into Benedikt’s groin.

“Shut up,” Mats hissed, his face inches from Benedikt’s and his lip curling threateningly.

“You’re hurting me, Mats,” Benedikt winced. He felt tears brimming in his eyes and he hoped they wouldn’t spill and let Mats know how weak he was. Mats loosened his grip ever so slightly, his dark eyes burning with an emotion Benedikt couldn’t identify, his thick, long lashes cloaking those eyes in mystery.

“Let go. Please,” Benedikt choked out. “You do have control over yourself.”

He let out a shaky breath he hadn’t known he’d been holding when Mats relaxed and was once more holding Benedikt gingerly against his body, and the difference was so great that Benedikt thought he might’ve been hallucinating about the pain and fear he’d felt just seconds ago. He felt safe now.

“See what I can do to you when I’m still myself? Imagine if I weren’t,” Mats rasped, moonlight bathing half his face while the other half hid in shadow. “I don’t want anything worse to happen.”

“You’re always still yourself,” Benedikt breathed back, biting his lip as he felt a hot tear rolling down his cheek. Mats caught it in his palm.

_How does Mats still not understand that he’s responsible for everything he does?_

“Don’t cry,” Mats dictated, trailing this thumbs up Benedikt’s cheeks to brush the wetness out of his eyes. Benedikt’s eyelids fluttered shut as Mats pressed his chest even closer until the heat given off by their bodies combined into one and their heartbeats became a call and response.

The next thing Benedikt felt was a set of warm lips taking hold of his own. His tongue displayed a mind of its own as it found Mats’ perfect teeth and skirted over them while Mats attempted to thrust even further into his mouth, angling his head so Benedikt wouldn’t have to. Benedikt tasted just how Mats remembered and better; sweet and sugary, like candy. Like innocence.

An unknown period of time passed before Mats had to pry himself away for oxygen. He took in several desperate gulps of the cool night air, listening to nothing but Benedikt’s shortness of breath reflective of his own and seeing nothing but meaningless images dancing behind his eyelids, unknowing of when he'd closed them.

When Mats wrenched his eyes open again, both of Benni’s freckled cheeks were wet and shining and Mats could see more tears falling at a steady rate. Benni’s lips rubbed against each other protectively and his throat quivered as he struggled against the tangled lump that had formed there.

“Stop crying,” Mats ordered, stepping away from him as panic began to set in. This was how he made Benni feel. This was what he did to Benni. “Stop!”

But Benni didn’t stop. All he did was cover his face with his hands, completely overwhelmed by Mats Hummels. He couldn’t fall for Mats anymore. He was dangerous. He was caring and generous and thoughtful, but he was also cruel and selfish and dangerous. He was disturbed and he needed more help than Benedikt could give him.

Benedikt cried harder than he ever had before, unrestrained now that his throat had broken through.

It was the most horrible sound that Mats had ever heard. It made his stomach lurch. He needed Benni to stop.

But Benni wasn’t going to stop.

So he grabbed Benedikt’s shoulders roughly and moved him off of his truck. But before Mats could make a dash for the driver’s seat, Benni was already putting up a fight, clinging onto him in a way Mats couldn’t tell whether it was supposed to be violent or loving.

“You can’t leave!” Benni gasped. “We have to talk!”

“There’s nothing to talk about!” Mats roared, struggling against Benedikt’s suffocating grip. “Get the fuck off of me and leave me alone! I have to go!”

And then, with an enormous effort, he managed to shove Benedikt off of him and into the grass, where he collapsed in a heap.

_Fuck._

An engine was rumbling before Benedikt realized that the smell filling his nose wasn’t blood. It was dirt. He was on the ground, and he was too weak to get up. Thank god the ever-forgiving earth was there to muffle his strangled cries from the unforgiving world. Thank god that fucking rumbling noise was still there to drown out the horrible noises he was making so the entire world wouldn’t wake up on his behalf.

He didn’t know how long he lay in the dirt, shaking and crying and lost. He didn’t know how he ended up in the bathroom with a handful of tissues, blowing his nose incessantly and jabbing at his red, puffy eyes. He didn’t know who wet a washcloth and tenderly wiped the dirt and salty stains off of his face, he was pretty sure it wasn’t him though. He didn’t know how he ended up in his own warm, welcoming bed. He didn’t know how Jambalaya ended up tucked in his arms, but he did know that he was the one who sent the poor monkey flying across the room into the wall.

He thought he heard a delicate word spoken by a raw voice, but he didn’t know whether it had been “Goodnight” or “Goodbye”.


	21. Running

_You’re running but you’re not really running at all, you’re not sure how you’re moving because it may just be the world spinning out of control against you. You’re not even sure if it’s the real world or your own world that’s wheeling recklessly about._

_It hurts but it doesn’t really hurt at all because it can’t be real, so it’s just your imagination. But it hurts so much. Why would someone want you to suffer like this? If death can be felt, this is what it must feel like._

_You’re alone but you’re not really alone at all because someone is following you. No, they’re_ chasing _you. You try to run faster but you can’t because you’re not really running at all. You’re on the ground. You’re on the ground and they’re on top of you. You thrash wildly about until you feel your ankles and wrists being pinned down onto whatever eternity lies beneath you and you can’t move anymore, you can only scream and struggle so that’s what you do. And then all of a sudden you can’t breathe because you don’t know what’s latched itself onto your neck, real or unreal, but you feel like you can’t breathe. Your throat is burning from all the screaming and it tastes like bile. You can’t tell if you’re still screaming or not._

 _You think you hear your name amidst muffled sounds somewhere unreachable. But what right do you have to think that it’s_ your _name? You don’t feel like anything. You know you aren’t anything real._

_“Lord pray for this child.”_

_Was that your voice? Why did you just say that?_

_Why are you falling? Where are you going?_

_Are you going to the same place you were trying to get to when you were running? You’re not sure where you were trying to go. All you know was that you were running away from your life and if you were running away from your life then that means you were running in the direction of your death. If you were even running at all. You’re still not sure what you were doing. But it hurt. It still hurts, you are the embodiment of pain._

_“I’m so sorry…” you think you moan to no one in particular but you know it’s meant for someone._

_You don’t know what happens next because something happened to you, and you could be dead or unconscious or asleep but you’re not sure because you can’t think anymore._


	22. Discovery

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Benedikt returns to school and receives some news.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Christmas! xx

On Monday morning at school, Manuel greeted Benedikt with a deep frown and a crossing of the arms.

Of course Manuel was pissed at him. He’d ignored his best friend all weekend to buy burritos with Mats Hummels and go to One Direction concerts with Mats Hummels and suck Mats Hummels’ dick. Not that Manuel knew what he’d been doing. But Benedikt decided it might be better if Manuel stayed ignorant.

“Don’t tell me you forgot I existed because you were too busy running around with Mats,” grumped Manuel as soon as he approached Benedikt at his locker.

Benedikt sighed. Of course Manuel would know who he’d been with. “I was with him because he needed someone to talk to.” He slid a binder out of his locker and studied Manuel’s scowl.

“Needed someone to abuse enough until they gave him money?” Manuel fired back, leaning against the locker next to Benedikt’s as if to say, ‘you’re not getting away with this’.

“That’s the only argument you can come up with against him. Be original,” snapped Benedikt as he slammed his locker shut and spun around in Manuel’s wake.

“It’s bad enough by itself. That’s all I need to know to know what kind of person he is,” Manuel retorted, following Benedikt to his 1st Period government class.

 _And that’s all I_ want _to know,_ thought Benedikt. He refused to believe that Mats had done anything else. He couldn’t have, he wouldn’t or he would’ve told Benedikt. But thinking back to what happened last night, Benedikt shuddered. He really didn’t know what to think now. Mats was too unstable to tell.

Upon noticing the uncharacteristic bags underneath Benedikt’s eyes and the pallid aura of his skin, Manuel’s irritation softened.

“What’d he do to you, Benni? You look awful.”

“Thank you,” Benedikt returned sarcastically. “He didn’t do anything to me. We hung out and we had a good time. If you have a problem with that then we can discuss it directly instead of you acting all jealous that I have other friends who aren’t you.”

Manuel raised an eyebrow. “Other friends that make you act like a dickhead?”

“I’m fine, thank you very much,” said Benedikt shortly.

Manuel fingered his backpack nervously. Something had definitely happened and Benedikt was either not telling him about it or altogether pretending that it didn’t happen. He took a deep breath and bit his lip.

“Benni, if something happened you can tell me. You can’t have started acting like this just out of the blue.”

“I don’t want to talk about it right now Manu,” replied Benedikt, sounding exasperated as hell. “Sorry for being a dick. I’ll talk to you at lunch.”

Manuel watched him shake his head to himself and trudge into Mr. Young’s room for government. He wished he could do something to help his best friend, but he knew he couldn’t because he had no influence over what Mats Hummels did or didn’t do. All he could do was hope the two of them would work it out, whatever it was. He knew how much Benedikt liked Mats; Benedikt showed more passion for Mats than what Manuel felt for Thomas.

All he could do was hope it would work out because Benni deserved to be happy.

\-----

It was a nightmare.

It had to have been a nightmare. Mats would never have treated him like that...But _would_ he? Is this how he had intimidated Julian?

It felt so real. The bruising at the base of his spine was real, as were his colorless cheeks and swollen eyes when he looked in the mirror. He knew he had been on the ground because he could sharply recall the fresh scent of dirt in his nose, the searing impact as he hit his elbow on the curb was tangible. He remembered, he still felt, the aching in his chest from crying and the malice in Mats’ voice telling him to stop. It couldn’t have not been real.

What was wrong with Mats? What could possibly have turned him from sweet and cheeky to spiteful and cruel from one moment to the next? How was it possible that he could give Benedikt the best feeling in the world then hours later kick him to the ground, quite literally? But it was the flickers of tenderness within Mats’ oppression that confused Benedikt most of all.

“Benedikt.”

He heard his name coming from the outside world intrude in his whirlpool of thoughts and snapped out of it.

One of the counseling aids had knocked on the door and delivered a pass. After halting his PowerPoint presentation on elections to inspect it, the class had taken up small chatter as Mr. Young approached Benedikt and showed him the pass.

“They want to see you in the counseling office.”

Benedikt felt an unsettling yet familiar sense of knowing. It wasn’t late enough in the year to be called in for academic planning, so his summons to see his counselor could only mean one thing -- they were ‘concerned’ about him.

“Do I need to go right now?” Benedikt asked, looking earnestly at Mr. Young. “I don’t want to miss any notes.”

Mr. Young set the pass down in front of him and responded patiently, “you can stop by before lunch and make up what you miss. I can’t force you to do anything, but I was asked to deliver this pass to you and send you off.”

“I don’t want to go,” asserted Benedikt.

“Okay, Benedikt. I’ll leave this pass with you in case you change your mind,” Mr. Young conceded. He’d learned a long time ago that it was never worth it to argue with stubborn students like Benedikt Höwedes. The smarter they were, the more stubborn they could be.

Ten minutes later while Benedikt was busy scribbling down the most detailed notes he had ever taken, there was another knock on the door and this time it was not a counseling aid, but Benedikt’s counselor herself. Mrs. Grayson was a middle-aged woman who Benedikt felt talked down to her students more than worked with them. From the few times they had spoken about his academic plans, Benedikt concluded that he didn’t like her because she tried to convince him that he needed to determine his career path before he left high school. Benedikt had no idea what he wanted his career path to be.

Mrs. Grayson motioned for Mr. Young to come speak with her briefly. Mr. Young nodded several times as she spoke in a low, urgent voice, looking directly at Benedikt.

“Benedikt,” Mr. Young said, shooting him a ‘you know what you need to do’ look as he returned to the front of the room.

Benedikt’s face was on fire and his underarms stung as he shuffled across the room, all eyes on him because his dismissal was a fascinating interruption to the dullness of the lesson. He didn’t look at Mrs. Grayson when he reached her and shut the classroom door behind him as they took off down the hall for her office. He was eternally grateful that Mr. Young’s classroom was on the first floor and therefore there wasn’t much of a hike to the counseling office, making it less likely he’d be seen by any stragglers who had smuggled their way out of class or who were coming in late.

“How are you doing, Benedikt?” she asked, far too cheerfully.

“I’m fine,” Benedikt replied listlessly. Besides the fact that he had an atrocious headache and that Mats Hummels was literally making him sick, it was true.

Waiting in Mrs. Grayson’s office for the two of them was the school’s police officer.

What the hell was he doing here?

Mrs. Grayson asked him to step out for a minute so she could talk to Benedikt in private beforehand.

_Before what?_

She invited him to take a seat and Benedikt took up the offer, quite stiffly. He knew what was coming, he knew the kinds of accusations she was about to make and he was already getting defensive.

“Benedikt…” she began, folding her hands across her desk and regarding him kindly, in a motherly way that made Benedikt cringe. “Some of your teachers have come to me with concerns about you.”

“Who?” Benedikt interjected, crumpling the pass up in his right hand.

“Your choir instructor noticed that you didn’t audition for the district choir on Saturday. She told me that you’re a talented, dedicated choir member and that it was unlike you to skip the audition.”

Benedikt nodded slowly, tearing the pass in half.

“Your math teacher also informed me that she was taken aback with your behavior on Friday. She told me that you were shocked that there was a test that day and that she had to confiscate this--” Mrs. Grayson held up Benedikt’s phone and handed it back-- “because you were using it while the test was still taking place. I know it’s still early in the year, but your potential was clear from the start and she’s worried about your sudden change in attitude.”

Benedikt tried to check his phone but the battery had run out. “Why didn’t they just tell me in person then? Why did I have to get pulled out of class to come talk to you? I’m fine, Mrs. Grayson, I was sick on Friday but I still had to come to school and I still wasn’t feeling well enough to audition on Saturday. That’s all. I’m all better now so there shouldn’t be a problem anymore,” he explained with certainty.

Mrs. Grayson sighed. “I just wanted to check on you, Benedikt.”

“So can I go back to class now?”

Mrs. Grayson shook her head and appeared slightly nervous, as if she knew that Benedikt was not going to like what she was about to tell him. “Not yet. The reason I called you in before you had a chance to talk to those teachers today was because there is something else that happened last night that we need to talk to you about…” And with that, she rose from her desk to welcome Officer Malks back into her office.

Benedikt felt betrayed. The pass floated to the carpet in two pieces.

How did they know? How did they find out what had happened between him and Mats? It was none of their business, _none_ , and why hadn’t Mrs. Grayson just asked him about it in the first place instead of trying to wheedle it out of him by acting concerned?

It wasn’t fair, it wasn’t fair.

As Officer Malks entered the room and took the chair on the wall perpendicular to where Benedikt sat, Benedikt clenched his fists and felt the anger rising as heat to his face. This was none of their business.

But they couldn’t know, there was no way they could’ve found out. It had to be something else, something had to have happened with Mats last night that Benedikt didn’t know about--

Before he had time for his anger at the injustice to subside into panic, Officer Malks was speaking to him in a grave tone of voice while Mrs. Grayson listened and watched sympathetically like she wasn't quite sure how to contribute.

He couldn’t hear what Malks was saying. He was too busy thinking of all the things Mats could have possibly done that would cause Benedikt to have to be pulled out of class to be interrogated about. Benedikt couldn’t hear what he was saying until Malks spoke aloud the next idea that had been tumbling around in Benedikt’s storm of a mind.

“...which leads us to believe that he ran away from home late last night.”


	23. It Will Come Back

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The chapter title is from [this song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMhZ18EmlFA)...

Kira was kneeling on the chair at least a foot away from the table so she had to lean over to reach her drawing. Her tongue poked out of her mouth in concentration.

Normally, she didn’t like to draw or color because drawing and coloring took too much patience and concentration that could be spent on more important things. When she did draw, she was sloppy and messy and all her coloring went way out of the lines, zigzagging all over the place. When she painted in art at school, all the colors mixed in together and created a big brown out-of-control mess that made the art teacher sit down at the stool next to her and say, ‘Kira, you need to be more careful with your painting’ and show her how to not mix all the colors together.

Today, however, she decided to draw a picture after she ate her dinner and cleared her plate to the sink. Her seldom-used crayons were scattered helter-skelter across the table, tossed aside after they were used. She gripped the blue crayon how her teacher showed her to and colored a blue streak across the top of the paper for the sky, pressing it so hard that part of the crayon flew off and landed on her dress.

“Oops,” she said as she plucked it off and dropped it back on the table. Then she leaned back to assess her work.

She had drawn a family picture. From left to right across the paper stood Mr. Hummels, Mrs. Hummels, Mats, Kira, and Silver. Dad, mom, and Mats were all the same height whereas Kira came up to about where Mats’ knees would’ve been should her coloring have been that intricate. Silver was about the same size as Kira. All four humans floated hand-in-hand a few inches above the vertical green lines representing grass and several inches below the horizontal streak representing the sky. Kira decided that she had done an excellent job drawing herself; she had given herself a red bow to match the bracelet Benni gave her and a yellow triangle dress and a colorful lollipop. The rest of her family looked okay. She’d given everyone except her dad a mop of black squiggles for their hair, Mats’ being the shortest -- dad was given a few gray lines instead. Besides herself, her favorite person in the drawing was Mats because she had given him eyebrows, unlike the rest of them. She thought it made him look angry.

Kira was quite proud of her drawing.

She hopped down from her chair, paper clutched carefully in both hands, and trudged across the kitchen to find mommy or daddy and show them. Normally, she would’ve skipped, but the spring in her youthful step was missing.

Kira found her dad in the living room, his hands folded on top of his stomach, his eyes fixed on the blank television screen, and a book lay forgotten on the arm of the chair. Silver was sprawled on the couch across from him, huffing and puffing in her slumber.

Kira peeked around corner timidly, suddenly feeling a bit scared of her own dad. She had never seen him like this. It was frightening to her.

“Daddy?” she said in a tiny voice, pressing the drawing to her chest for safety. She wasn’t sure whether she was trying to protect the drawing or herself.

Mr. Hummels turned his head ever so slightly and some of the tension in his rigid form visibly melted away at the sight of his daughter; he looked relieved.

He still had Kira. Darling little Kira.

She waltzed into the room and stood between his legs and presented her drawing, hoping it would make him happy again.

“I made a picture,” she explained innocently, peering up at her dad for approval. “It has everyone in it, even Silver.”

Mr. Hummels closed his eyes and made a gesture with his head that was indistinguishable between a shake or a nod. “That’s nice, honey.”

Kira bit her lip, letting her hard work drop to her side in disappointment because her dad had shut his eyes. “Do you think it’s good?”

Mr. Hummels sighed, giving up all efforts to hide his fear and forlornness from his six-year-old daughter. After all, he couldn’t hide the fact that Mats was missing.

At first, he’d hoped that Mats had just stayed out too late and hadn’t let them know where he was yet. At the worst, he thought that Mats was acting dramatic for attention. But the longer it went on, the longer Mats didn’t answer any texts or calls and the longer he was gone, the more Mr. Hummels realized Mats may very well be serious and that he’d known it all along. He’d taken off from work and spent the good part of his day driving all over the area, looking for Mats. He checked all the places he knew Mats would’ve gone and when he couldn’t find him, that’s when he knew that Mats didn’t want to be found. At around six o’clock, he couldn’t take it anymore and entrusted the police to find his son for him.

It was the ultimate form of failure. He’d now lost not one son, but two.

And the one he could’ve saved he gave up on.

All he could hope now was that Mats would come home. And if whatever Mats found out there was worse than what he was trying to escape from, then he would come home. The chance was good enough, but diminished more and more with every minute that went by and he still wasn’t found.

Why had Mats done this?

The last person he’d been with was Benedikt, but Mr. Hummels couldn’t even consider that it might’ve been an extreme reaction to something Benedikt did in any way. The way Benedikt had reacted when he’d been told was telling enough; it was clear that Benedikt cared deeply for Mats and Mr. Hummels knew that Mats was very fond of Benedikt, so it had to have been something deeper. Something that had been bothering him for a while, about the way he’d grown up or…or maybe something had happened between him and Benedikt after all. Maybe it was _because_ he cared about Benedikt so much that he reacted in this way. Still, not an inch within Mr. Hummels could find the heart to blame Benedikt. Mats was the one who decided to run away. Benedikt was the one who was left behind, confused and upset.

What had happened though, or if it wasn’t a single event, what had led up to this? If it was the former, maybe they’d never find out. If it was the latter, Mr. Hummels already had a pretty good idea. But he didn’t want to think about that.

“Daddy?” the small, timid voice brought him back to the present and he opened his eyes to see a terrified Kira standing before him, her light blue dress rumpled and crooked and her braids and headband, as usual, falling out and messy after a long day. Her eyes were wide and she was chewing her thumb shyly, something she hadn’t done in years. The drawing she’d wanted to show him lay facedown on the carpet.

“Are you sad?” Her voice came out muffled through her thumb, so Mr. Hummels gently tugged her hand away from her mouth and lifted her up onto his leg, where he could hold her and keep her safe. He still didn’t say anything -- what was he supposed to say? Instead, he bundled her small torso up in his arms and she sunk into him gratefully, wrapping her arms around his neck.

“Did Matsi leave because he doesn’t love us?”

If words could split a heart in two, then Mr. Hummels’ did just that. He took a deep breath.

“He loves us very much,” he answered as capably as he could without his voice wavering. “I don’t want you to worry, sweetheart. There are lots of policemen and women who are looking for him and when they find him, they’ll bring him back home and we’ll make sure he’s safe and that he won’t leave again.”

“We can put him on a leash, like Silver,” Kira suggested into his shirt.

Mr. Hummels gave a short, humorless laugh through his nose that might’ve been a hiccup and rubbed his daughter’s back. Her suggestion was just as plausible as any ideas he had. Really, he didn’t know how they were going to make sure Mats wouldn’t leave again. If they found him.

They had to find him. They just had to, the odds were guaranteed. As a father, it was his job to think of the worst case scenarios that were nearly impossible to actually happen. But it was also his job to be the reassurance, to be strong for his daughter and wife and he was hardly managing that. Mrs. Hummels had gone to have coffee and talk with one of her work friends after she’d grown exhausted from her own search and wasn’t home yet. It was like 12 years ago all over again; at the times they needed each other the most, they disassociated and only came together again to clash.

Mr. Hummels wasn’t religious, but he prayed before settling in for a long, sleepless night, waiting and waiting and waiting and waiting…

\-----

The room liquified before Benedikt’s eyes. He felt claustrophobic, he needed to get out of here, he needed to go --

“Sit down, Benedikt.”

He wasn’t aware that he’d jumped to his feet until he felt himself being pushed back down. He tried to say something but his throat was blocked solid. He couldn’t see anything, the room was melting into itself and spinning around like he was the second hand of a clock…

“Since you were the last person with him last night, we just wanted to check with you to see if you knew anything about where he might’ve gone and why. No one is saying it’s your fault -- this is simply because you spent the evening together and he disappeared sometime between late last night and early this morning. We know he was home at some point after dropping you off because his sister and his vehicle are both there,” Officer Malks explained calmly.

“I know where he is,” Benedikt forced words through the wall in his throat without consent from his brain.

Officer Malks looked interested and waited for Benedikt to continue while Mrs. Grayson sat behind her desk, her facial expression and body language suggesting that she wasn’t quite sure how much her presence was needed.

“I think I know where he went. I’m going to go find him,” Benedikt said forcefully with much more volume than necessary, but it was hard for him to measure when everything around him was distorted and blowing in and out of proportion. He was on his feet again, ready to explode out the door and run faster than he ever had in any cross country race to the place where he was almost certain Mats would be. He whirled around and was about to escape when he felt a pair of rough hands grab him from behind and he was trapped, using all his might to propel himself forward but not moving an inch.

“Let me go!” Benedikt cried, panic overtaking all his senses as he struggled against the force that was pulling back back. “I need to go!”

“Benedikt, you need to sit back down. I can’t let you go, but if you tell me where you think he might’ve gone then I can relay that information to the police who are searching for him,” Officer Malks said easily, as if it were not a strain at all on him to hold Benedikt back.

“GET OFF OF ME!” Benedikt yelled, a horrible scratch to his voice that came with screaming too loudly and several heads outside of the office turned towards the square window in the door. Officer Malks’ grip tightened on Benedikt’s upper arms so every time he tried to break away, his shoulders ended up twisting back and it was too uncomfortable to keep up the defiance for longer than a few seconds. Benedikt’s breathing was ragged and uneven, winded. He tried to kick the man away from him, throw him off, anything, but it was all to no avail because he was merely held with greater assertion the more desperate his blows became.

“ _Sit down_ ,” Officer Malks ordered threateningly as he yanked Benedikt backwards.

“GET THE FUCK OFF OF ME! I NEED TO FIND HIM! _LET ME GO! LET ME--_ ” Benedikt screamed so erratically that it made him choke over his own voice and he started coughing uncontrollably, all his efforts to get away slacking and it only took a millisecond before he realized that Officer Malks had taken his temporary weakness as an opportunity to let go. He was flying out the door and through the halls of the school, out into the fresh outside air and down the streets, letting his feet carry him, unable to stop because he was running so fast, all the while coughing so harshly that it occurred to him he might just cough up an entire lung. He was numb though, he couldn’t feel anything or see or hear anything except Mats, and he knew he needed to get out of the streets soon before Officer Malks had time to hop into his cruiser and speed after him --

He was crashing through the woods, the same woods that Mats had showed him and the woods he was sure Mats would be hiding in. The branches didn’t touch his arms this time because he was wearing a silvery blue sweater over a long-sleeve button down, but even if he weren’t he probably wouldn’t have felt anything.

He reached the clearing and Mats wasn’t there.

Benedikt’s heart was approaching an astronomical rate as he dashed off again, not even stopping to breathe before he combed the entire woods three times through up and down because Mats _had_ to be here, he just had to be, there was nowhere else he could’ve gone if he didn’t have his truck…

And then, Benedikt realized with a sensationalizing jolt that he was not alone in these woods. That these wild, thick woods with its impeccable canopy of trees and lurking creatures were not empty. There were a few cops dressed in dark blue as well as a police dog, doing the exact same thing that he was doing if you took away the fervor and passion and mindlessness. And they were looking at him, at first hopefully because the kid was about the right height, but then they realized his hair and skin were much too fair to be the kid they were looking for. Besides, he looked more like a school boy who’d become confused and ended up in the middle of the woods instead of at school, not like the pot-smoking, drunken wreck of a boy they were looking for.

Benedikt froze like a deer caught in headlights, only a few feet away from one of them, an enormous, not-messing-around kind of guy.

“What are you doing out here, kid?” he called gruffly, not necessarily an interrogating question but a curious one.

Aggravation brewed within Benedikt and he forgot what he had been doing all along. What was he doing, anyway? Looking for Mats. He had been looking for Mats Hummels because Mats Hummels had run away because of something he, Benedikt, had done. Because of the superiority with which he had treated Mats and because of his inability to see anything from Mats’ perspective. He was looking for Mats because Mats had run away.

“I want to go home,” was all Benedikt said as he lost all his dignity and let his sore mind get the better of him.

The officer simply nodded his understanding and gestured for Benedikt to come with him. But Benedikt didn’t move an inch, rooted to the spot, having succumbed to the small and innocent little boy that he used to be.

The policeman approached Benedikt and clapped a large hand to his shoulder, nearly causing Benedikt’s knees to give out underneath him. But he wasn’t _that_ pathetic, so he caught himself and remembered how to move his muscles as the officer guided him forward, away from the heart of the deep woods.

“I’ll take you home, kid,” he promised. “You just gotta tell me where you live.”

“Okay,” Benedikt agreed, watching his feet with fascination as they moved forward, one in front of the other and then again…

The officer allowed Benedikt to sit in the front seat of the cop car, and if he hadn’t felt so unnerved by the shock of Mats’ disappearance then his inner boy would’ve cut right through again and been intrigued by all the unidentifiable gadgets that were up here.

The ride was mostly silent until Benedikt’s throat caught and he started coughing again, hacking everything up and spitting it viciously out onto his pants -- he had no concern for manners or even basic hygienic rules right now.

“Water?” the officer prompted.

Benedikt nodded and wiped his mouth off with the back of his hand, looking pitifully at the officer as he was handed a bottle of water. After he’d taken a few sips, his throat felt better and he had the sense to at least pour a little onto his hand and wipe off the mucus on his pants.

“Mats Hummels is my boyfriend and I was looking for him,” Benedikt blurted out, staring in disgust at the wet spots on his pants and really wishing he hadn’t done that and at least spat out the window, or something, because really this was so gross--

“Boyfriend?”

“I think so. It’s only been a week or less, but he told me last night that we were together,” Benedikt said.

“He told you? Did you agree to this?” the officer asked incredulously.

“Yes. I wanted to because I like him. But then when he was dropping me off at home, he got out of the truck and he grabbed me and I couldn’t really tell what he was trying to do because one moment he was kissing me and the next he was throwing me to the ground and I just didn’t get it. He said he was afraid that he would hurt me so why did he run away? That hurts me more than when he slammed my back against the side of the truck,” Benedikt admitted.

“It sounds like he’s being abusive,” the officer said seriously.

“He wasn’t,” Benedikt added frantically. “You don’t understand. He didn’t mean to hurt me, I-I think something got to him and he was trying to warn me that his mind wasn’t in the right place. Please don’t tell anyone, I don’t think he knew what he was doing...”

The officer nodded slowly, comprehending this new information. This was Benedikt Höwedes, the one who’d last been with the kid they were looking for, and he could simply be covering up for Mats Hummels, not wanting him to get in trouble, or he could be telling the truth and the kid really wasn’t right in the head at the time. If so, that made it even more critical if this kid was on the loose; he could be a danger to himself and to others.

Nothing was confirmed, though. He would need to warn the other officers, but the parents could wait to be informed until everything was known to be true. Until they found him. They were under enough stress as it was.

Benedikt took another long drink of water then screwed the cap back on when he was done.

“Do you think you’re going to find him?”

The officer took the red light as an opportunity to study Benedikt Höwedes. The boy chewed his bottom lip in anticipation of the answer, guilt and worry and sadness all twisted around together in his expression and in his eyes, and his hair was swept back from his forehead. He must’ve been running pretty hard. He must be a fast runner.

“That’s up to him, Benedikt,” the officer answered solemnly.

Benedikt frowned. “I don’t get it. What do you mean?”

Lifting a giant hand to massage behind his ear, the officer elaborated with a heavy sigh. “If he wants to come back, he will. He’ll get hungry and tired and he’ll need somewhere to sleep. Just give it till tonight, kid.”

“What if he doesn’t, though? Isn’t the reason he ran away because he was trying to avoid something? So why would he just give up and come back to it?” Benedikt asked, turning the water bottle over in his hands and watching the water tumble like an hourglass from one end to the other. He knew he was playing dumb, but he needed to officer to tell him that this wasn’t a case of what he feared the most.

“He’ll realize that it’s much more difficult and demoralizing to try and outrun something than to face it.”

“So why wouldn’t he want to come back?” Benedikt pressed, looking at nothing but the clear water in its clear, plastic container. He ripped off the label to see the clearness in its entirety.

“If he wasn’t able to,” the officer said without hesitation.

Benedikt was quiet as he thought about this. What the officer was saying was that Mats was going to come back because he wasn’t going to last out there, he was going to give himself in eventually. So why did they need to search for him? To speed up the process?

_In case he’s dead._

No, that couldn’t be. Benedikt was freaking out and jumping to strange conclusions. There were police searching for Mats because he was someone’s child and that’s what the police did when someone’s child went missing. Not because they were searching for his dead body. They were searching for an alive Mats to bring home, not for a body. It was still only morning, after all. What could’ve happened by now? Mats still had plenty of time to decide to come home.

Despite Benedikt’s attempt to reason with himself, he understood too well what the officer was saying. If Mats was okay, he’d come home. If he wasn’t okay, then he wouldn’t come home. How could Mats not be okay? If he was completely out of his mind and thought that was going to fucking kill himself. Or, god forbid, if some other deranged person had--

Maybe he hadn’t run away at all, maybe he’d been taken. Kidnapped.

Benedikt didn’t recall when his hand had flown up to cover his mouth and nose.

“This your house, kid?” the officer rumbled, either oblivious to Benedikt’s shock or pretending he didn’t notice it, for which Benedikt was thankful as his dark thoughts quickly faded.

Benedikt swallowed the shaky feeling that was leaking through his body. “Yeah. Thanks for the ride, officer. I hope you find him.”

“Take it easy, kid, alright?” he offered what might’ve been a gruff smile as Benedikt unbuckled his seatbelt and reached for the door handle.

“Okay,” Benedikt replied, opening the door and climbing out. “Thanks again.”

“No problem,” the officer nodded at Benedikt, who shut the door and dragged himself up the walkway and into his house in such a way that implied he already knew that Mats wasn’t okay and therefore would not be coming back.

 _I shouldn’t’ve told him that,_ the officer thought to himself as he watched Benedikt’s slumped shoulders disappear behind the front door.

_But he had the right to know._

\-----

Benedikt’s heart clattered to the bottom of his chest when he realized that his dad was working from home today, typing away in his office with not a care in the world. Benedikt could handle his dad any other time, but not right now. Right now, he just wanted to be alone.

He had a fleeting hope that it might not be too late to slip upstairs and into his room. But Mr. Höwedes had already heard the front door open and shut and he poked his head around the door of his office, curious to find out who had burst their way into his home in the middle of the day.

Benedikt prepared himself for a lecture. _’Why are you home so early? Aren’t you supposed to be at school? Why did you leave your dirty plate on the table this morning?’_

But instead of going off on him, Mr. Höwedes’ cold, stressed expression softened and he stepped out of the doorway, regarding Benedikt in a way that suggested he wanted to say something but wasn’t sure whether he had permission to say it or not.

Benedikt shuffled into the house and lowered himself onto the couch, burying his face in his hands and rubbing his tired eyes with the tips of his fingers. He couldn’t remember what it felt like to not have to worry about anything. He couldn’t remember what his life had been like at this exact time last week, his old life without Mats Hummels.

He couldn’t figure out which life he liked more.

He felt useless.

“He was your friend, wasn’t he?”

Benedikt stopped rubbing his eyes abruptly when the words reached his ears, but he didn’t uncover his face.

“What are you talking about, dad,” Benedikt mumbled dryly into the palms of his hands. What did he mean, he _was_ Benedikt’s friend? Mats Hummels still is Benedikt’s friend.

“There’s an article about Mats Hummels on the county newssite. It says he’s gone missing and gives a number to call if you see him or know anything about where he may have gone.”

Why was this all happening so soon? Wouldn’t they at least wait a day to see if he came home instead of plastering his face all over the news mere hours after his disappearance? Hadn’t he been gone for this long before? The only reason the panic would fly up so quickly was if there was some sort of immediate danger. Someone must’ve known something about Mats, whether they consciously knew it or not, that meant this was different.

Benedikt didn’t say anything to his dad, didn’t look up or move. He didn’t even have the heart to stiffen when he felt the couch dipping next to him and a tentative, unsure arm curl itself around his curved back. He mentally braced himself for the coldness he expected to spread across his back from his dad’s arm like an ice cube. He kept expect it to come at any moment. He even tried to convince himself into believing that the coldness was there, but it wasn’t and it never came.

It had been so long since he’d hugged his dad that he had forgotten what it felt like. So long that he wasn’t certain he ever really had hugged him, if he had ever really had held onto his father for more than a single second.

But now, it would be so easy to just fall in his arms and let his dad do his job as a father and give him a shoulder to lean on. His dad had really got the tough love parenting thing down, but he’d always sort of stumbled around regular love. Maybe he just didn’t know how to do it.

He was trying though. After all these years, he at least was trying.

Benedikt didn’t hug him back. That was too much for right now. But he did relax and lean into his dad’s shoulder, allowing him to gather his only son in his arms for the first time since he was able to fit in them.

And it felt okay.

“I’m worried about him,” Benedikt confessed, knowing he might’ve been pushing his dad’s capacity for empathy a bit but figuring it might be okay.

Mr. Höwedes hesitated, then settled on “I’m sorry.”

So Benedikt gave up any hopes that he could talk to his dad about his missing friend. He closed his eyes and let go of all his strength, entrusting his dad to hold him up and he did. His dad hugged him tightly, almost lovingly, and for a brief, wild second, Benedikt itched to return the favor. But he didn’t.

Finally, after a minute of heavy, warm silence in which only Benedikt’s shallow breathing could be heard, Mr. Höwedes shifted slightly and moved his hands to Benedikt’s sides. Benedikt sat up, eyeing his father with a question and disappointment.

“I have to go back to work,” Mr. Höwedes informed him, his eyes transitioning back to their normal state of being anxious and exhausted.

Benedikt’s nostrils flared and he wiggled out of his dad’s hands, facing forward again and leaning back into the cushions. Mr. Höwedes slowly rose to his feet and didn’t turn back before he strode back into his office.

After he was sure his dad was immersed in his work on climate change again, Benedikt pushed himself abruptly off the couch and slipped upstairs, another coughing spell overtaking him as he climbed the stairs and he cursed whatever was turning him into such a childish weakling, Mats Hummels be damned. He still had a rotten headache and his throat was burning and every time he thought he was better, Mats Hummels would pop up with another surprise and make him feel ill again.

He opened the water bottle the officer had given him and took a sip in between coughs, letting it run down his throat and ease the burning sensation so he could breathe again. The more he thought about Mats Hummels, the more bitter and salty the water tasted. The memory of Mats flooded him and the more it tasted like Mats had in his mouth. He had liked the taste, but it was too strong, much too strong.

Benedikt wiped off his watery eyes with his shirt then plugged his phone in to charge. While he waited for it to power up again, he dug around his trainwreck of a room in search of a package of cough drops, deciding that he needed to get himself together once and for all, Mats or no Mats.

Just as Benedikt found a half-full package of cherry flavored drops on his shelf and unwrapped one, his phone buzzed several times in a row. He popped the drop into his mouth and sucked on it as he glanced at his phone.

The most recent ones at the top of the screen were from Manuel. First, _Do you want to go to the mall with Julian and Thomas and me after school?_ and before that _I know you don’t have your phone back yet but this is for when you get it, I didn’t mean to be a dick this morning but you were acting weird, I’m sorry for pushing it. We can talk during lunch_

There were a few others, but he scrolled past them until he came upon a text sent at 1:13 AM from a number he recognized but whose contact he had not put in yet.

_Benni I am so sorry, i didnt mean to push you down i swear i didnt i was just trying to get you off me so i could get away from you before i did anything worse. i am insane i am so fucked up there’s something wrong with me and im running away, its for ur safety dont come after me. dont know whats gonna happen to me and dont care. As long as I’m away from you and I cant hurt you. Bye benni i love you remember this is only because i care about you alot_

Benedikt’s phone clattered onto his bed frame and then landed with a soft thud on one of his stuffed bears.

So that’s why Mats had run away.

It _was_ Benedikt’s fault, after all.

But through all the pounding and blame and regret and confusion going on in his head, there was a crazy sense of relief. Because he knew Mats wasn’t going to get far. If it was _Benedikt_ Mats was running from, he wasn’t going to get far at all because Benedikt would be with Mats no matter where he went. Mats couldn’t really think that, he couldn’t think that Benedikt thought that little of him.

But...it wasn’t Benedikt Mats was running away from. No, it was something far greater.

It was himself.

Mats was running away from the fear he had of himself.


	24. Manuel Neuer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Manuel feels helpless. Julian does what he can. Benedikt learns Mats' fate.

Benedikt didn’t show up for lunch or 7th period chemistry, nor was he answering his texts even though Manuel was sure he’d gotten his phone back and recharged it because it said his messages had delivered.

Mats Hummels wasn’t there, either. But Manuel was less concerned about that than he was about his best friend.

Presentations got under way as soon as the bell rang to signalize the beginning of class, and Manuel kept glancing out the door to check if Benedikt was just running late. Halfway through the first presentation, Mr. Löw interrupted Marco and Mario’s duet of ‘uhm’s and ‘yeah’s and ‘errr’s (because they’d been too busy poking each other and laughing hysterically whenever they caught each other’s eyes to actually prepare a decent presentation) to ask Manuel if there was something fascinating taking place in the hallway.

“No, sir, there isn’t,” Manuel said quickly, blinking the image of the empty hallway away as he bashfully turned forward again.

“Then I suggest you devote your undivided attention to Mr. Reus and Mr. Götze because you will be evaluated at the end of the period,” Mr. Löw said silkily.

“Evaluated on what, exactly? I can literally feel myself getting stupider every time Marco opens his mouth,” Thomas blurted out jovially.

“That’s impossible because you can’t get any stupider than you already are,” Marco fired back as he folded his arms, his response easily being the most eloquent thing that had come out of his mouth since he and Mario had been given the floor. Mario nodded in agreement, his perfectly manicured eyebrows and plush lips knotted into a sneer.

Mr. Löw’s eyebrows disappeared into his hair and he considered reaching for the phone to inquire if he really had been assigned to teach high school chemistry this year and he was indeed not mistakenly the head teacher of a kindergarten class. Instead, he settled on announcing a new rule that all questions from the audience were to be held until the end of the presentation.

The rest of the presentations went much more smoothly. Miroslav and Philipp had created a clever video complete with special effects and green screens that made every presentation after theirs seem like a joke. Which most of them were, actually, even without the comparison. When it was Lukas and Bastian’s turn to go up, they acted so sarcastic and too-cool-for-school that Mr. Löw had to interrupt once more to remind his class that the reason this project had to be assigned in the first place was because of immature students in the past who had not listened to the safety rules and burned a finger or two off or ingested too much sodium bicarbonate and had to be transported to the emergency room (Manuel wanted to know the details but figured it was a good idea to just go along with it). Andre and Toni followed with an impressive and rather hilarious rap that caught the entire class in stitches of laughter; even Mr. Löw chuckled once or twice, and it was made even more funny by the fact that both Andre and Toni were quiet and serious to begin with, both maintaining relatively low profiles.

Like the majority of the class, Manuel and Thomas had gone with a PowerPoint presentation. It was not significant or humorous in any way, but it was decent and it would get them a reasonable grade. They still earned a few laughs, however, simply because Thomas Müller was involved and he was such an intrinsically ridiculous person with his knobby knees and incessant blabbering that his presence was almost always accompanied by a few laughs.

When the presentations were finished, Mr. Löw clapped his hands together once and praised his class on a job well done (for the most part).

“I believe the only pair left to present is Hummels and Höwedes. They will go once both of them have returned to school. You have free time for the rest of class, though I suggest you use your time wisely and get some work done, and you may leave once the bell rings. Thank you for a productive class period.”

Once his speech ended and the class’ attention gradually dispersed, chatter (Thomas’ loud, excited voice carrying over it all) once more filled the room and Manuel shut the book he’d been trying to read, unable to concentrate.

He had invited Benni to the mall this afternoon and still did not have an answer. It wasn’t unlike Benedikt to ignore his texts, even ones that required a response on his part, but when Benedikt didn’t answer it usually meant that something else was going on.

So what was going on with Benni? His mood this morning, and now he was missing school and not responding to an invitation to something he typically enjoyed doing? The Benni he had always known had been reduced to a shell of his former self. Manuel had a nagging instinct that told him it had something to do with Mats Hummels, and Manuel couldn’t help but feel annoyed at that.

Frowning, Manuel pulled out his phone from his pocket, deciding he’d send Benni one more text and then call him when the bell rang if he still hadn’t replied. But just as he was tapping in his message, he overheard a few snippets of the conversation taking place behind him and his fingers froze.

“Did you hear that Mats Hummels is missing?”

“No, what happened?”

“I don’t know. There’s not a lot of details, but they say he came back from a concert last night and was gone this morning.”

“That’s not surprising.”

“Why’d they send out an alert, though? I mean, if it’s been less than a day and there was nothing that happened that could’ve made him want to...he’s probably just out doing something stupid and he’ll come back tonight.”

“Because they think he’s not in the right state of mind,” a knowing, smart voice explained.

And slowly, the word got around the school that Mats Hummels was missing and speculative rumors formed as they always do. Manuel sincerely hoped that Benedikt hadn’t got wind of any of them, even if they were way too far-fetched to be even close to the truth.

A feeling of dread built inside Manuel from the pit of his stomach up that he couldn’t shake off. As soon as the bell rang, the hallways blossomed with the traditional buzz and unwinding of the end of the school day, the name ‘Mats Hummels’ popping up every so often yet in no light of concern, simply of curiosity. Manuel, however, was concerned, mainly for Benedikt.

Because if he knew anything about his best friend, it was that Benedikt had gone off by himself to search for Mats.

\-----

Erik had not heard from Mats since Friday. And now he may never hear from him again.

He spun his phone around in his palm. He was at the mall with Marco and Mario. Marco was sitting on his left on a couch in the lounge at the center of the mall between the escalators, potted trees on either side of them, a great, windowed ceiling hundreds of meters away, and the fragrance of pretzels, ice cream, and brand new clothes creating a stuffy surrounding atmosphere. They were waiting for Mario to finish having his eyebrows threaded, then they planned on trying on some new clothes from Zumiez and Pacsun.

“I’m hungry,” Marco complained. He dedicated a lot of his time waiting for Mario to get his eyebrows done or have his feet pedicured (without the polish, of course), and some days he was a little less patient than others.

“Go get something to eat then,” Erik replied listlessly, watching his phone twirl around in a countless number of circles before it landed on his palm again.

“You want anything?” Marco offered, pushing himself off the couch lazily and adjusting his snapback.

“Nah.”

“Good. Cause I was gonna make you go get it yourself.” Marco smirked and sauntered off, leaving Erik by himself.

Almost immediately after Marco had left, a thin, dark haired figure darted from behind the escalator and plopped himself on the opposite end of the couch from Erik. Erik turned his head nonchalantly to study the newcomer, a nervous-looking mouse of a boy.

He was from school, in Mats and Marco and Mario’s grade, but Erik didn’t know his name. Erik didn’t even bat an eye, expressing as much disinterest as he could in the boy but still unable to peel his eyes away.

“Hi,” the boy quavered.

Erik raised a single eyebrow. “What’s up?” he drawled.

“Just - just wanted to ask you something.” The boy’s dark eyes skirted fretfully about, assessing Erik head to toe then taking a tour of the mall, and he squirmed around in his seat as if he couldn’t wait to leap up and dash away to safety.

“Okay…”

“Do you know what happened to Mats?” The words stumbled out of the boy’s mouth in a nervous rush.

Erik closed his eyes, shaking his head as he hung his neck down towards the carpet in front of him again. “No.”

“Oh, okay. Sorry. Thanks. Bye.” And with that, the boy spazzed away back to where he came from, his heart racing and his breath shallow by the time he returned to Thomas and Manuel, who were loitering by the base of the escalator awaiting news.

It was true that he hadn’t done exactly what he’d been instructed to. He hadn’t pressed the matter. But he could surmise from the emptiness in Erik’s expression and the unguarded honesty in his voice that he’d learned all he needed to.

Manuel fixed Julian with an unspoken question and Thomas simply looked dazed, his mouth hanging open.

“He has no idea,” Julian panted, looking between Thomas and Manuel for approval.

Manuel looked slightly suspicious. “Are you sure you talked to him?”

Julian nodded frantically. “I did, I promise.”

Manuel peered around to regard Erik slumped over on the couch, the sides of his head in his hands as he stared straight ahead in front of him with unseeing blue eyes. For the first time, Manuel felt a little sympathy for the freshman. He had, after all, just heard the news that his smoking buddy and idol had run off missing.

“Alright. Well, there’s nothing else we can do. Do you guys wanna see a movie?” Thomas prodded.

Why Thomas was the one suggesting they go see a movie when he could hardly sit through the whole thing without fidgeting restlessly and commenting loudly on everything that happened was a mystery. And truthfully, Manuel didn’t want to see a movie. He didn’t want to be here at all. He knew he should be doing more to help his best friend, but he felt useless. Thomas was right; what was in his power? He could always stop by Benni’s house later on and find out what was going on.

“I’d like to see a movie,” supplied Julian, folding his arms shyly behind his back.

“Manu?” prompted Thomas.

“Sounds good to me,” the blond confirmed bleakly.

So they stepped onto the escalator and rode all the way up to the third floor for the theaters, each boy feeling a little useless and also ruthlessly cheap in his own way.

And these feelings were what Julian used to justify what he did when he got home. He sat down at his computer, logged into Facebook and opened up Erik Durm’s profile. They were not already friends. He sent Erik a request and clicked out of Facebook.

After dinner, he opened up Facebook again to see that Erik had accepted. Julian tried not to take it personally; Erik had 1,215 friends. He probably accepted everyone who had at least a couple of mutual friends. Julian went over in his head many times while he typed in his message that Erik Durm was not going to take this personally either. This was something that any fairly decent person would and should do.

_Julian Draxler: Hey [seen at 5:39 PM]_

_Erik Durm: who are you? [seen at 6:41 PM]_

_Julian Draxler: Well I don’t mean to be a creep but I’m the one who asked you about Mats at the mall today [seen at 6:42 PM]_

_Erik Durm: its all good [seen at 6:42 PM]_

_Julian Draxler: Okay good. Just checking. See you around then [seen at 6:42 PM]_

_Erik Durm: i guess [seen at 6:42 PM]_

_Julian Draxler: Yeah [seen at 6:47 PM]_

Julian tried to ignore the flighty feeling in his chest. He felt stupid and undermined. That whole thing had been unnecessary and foolish.

But as long as it was all good. That’s all he needed to check on.

\-----

Thursday through Monday. Five days. Five days of having Mats Hummels in his life. Five days of having the painfully affable yet equally treacherous boy as a friend, or perhaps even more. Five days of the most glorious beauty he had ever witnessed.

Condensed into these five days was the biggest roller coaster of Benedikt’s life. He had fallen asleep in the strong arms of another boy and woken up to a tender kiss. He had gone on a date, not his first one but certainly his most relaxed and pleasant one. He had climaxed for the first time without his own doing and he blew that same wretched person moments later, all smack next to a motherfucking public toilet for god’s sake. He’d been told that he was loved, and no matter what context it was in or what it meant, Mats Hummels had said that he loved him.

But he’d also been sick for five days. He’d had a temperature and clammy skin, an upset stomach and congestion and now a dreadful cough, and every time one symptom left his system another would set in. He had missed school and his audition and had a shard of glass shoot its way into his foot. He had been shoved and slammed around and so many parts of his body ached that none of them really ached at all. He was bruised and sore and shaken and confused and scared to death because he couldn’t help the person he cared about the most. The physical hurt from Mats’ actions couldn’t amount to the emotional hurt of his disappearance.

He lay across his bed now, having changed into a pair of black athletic shorts, socks and a faded yellow hoodie. He had a box of tissues beside him and every time he coughed until his abdomen couldn’t take it anymore, he would expectorate into a tissue, ball it up and drop it on the floor.

It was gross. He was being downright gross and he felt gross and he didn’t give a shit.

He tried to actively avoid the thought that Mats had been sitting in this very bed with him just the day before yesterday, confessing something that would change the basis of their relationship for the better by allowing Benedikt to understand, to see into his unpinnable mind if only a little. They had embraced here, shared their warmth. Mats had been here. But now it felt like he’d never been here at all.

Benedikt didn’t even know what time it was. He didn’t care, and it hardly mattered.

When his bedroom door was nudged a few inches open, allowing a slab of artificial light into the room, that’s when Benedikt realized how long he’d been up here in his bed, doing absolutely nothing. It was now dark outside and he’d been too caught up in his own pity to realize it.

A head of thick blond hair poked its way through the slit in the door. “Benni?”

Benedikt grumbled an incoherent response, which Manuel took as a cue to welcome himself in. He shut the door behind him, keeping the light switched off for Benni’s sake, and expertly crossed the room as if it were embedded with landmines; he’d grown quite accustomed to the mess, despite how often he nagged Benni about cleaning it up because he was going to trip over something and break his neck one day.

Manuel gingerly lowered himself onto the foot of Benni’s mattress, setting aside a bag of throat drops and Benni’s phone that he found there. “What are you doing?”

“I don’t know,” Benedikt answered, quite truthfully. “Being pathetic.”

Manuel sighed heavily. “Did he hurt you, Benni?”

“He didn’t mean to,” croaked Benedikt.

Manuel shook his head ever so slightly, picking at the loose pieces of skin around his fingernails. He glanced down at Benedikt, who was lying on his stomach with his legs and arms spread out at all sorts of odd angles and directions, and shook his head again. Half of him wanted to yell his head off at Benedikt for being such an idiot and letting himself get tied up with Mats Hummels, but the other half understood that deep down, this was what Benedikt had truly wanted and that for everything glamorous and beautiful, there would be just as fierce a consequence.

“It doesn’t matter what he meant to do. It matters what he did do,” Manuel said softly. “We hurt people and even though we don’t know we’re doing it, that doesn’t make it hurt any less.”

Benedikt sniffled as a means of letting Manuel know he’d been heard. It didn’t hurt any less, but indeed it hurt more.

_’Bye benni i love you remember this is only because i care about you alot’_

Manuel reached over and scrunched down Benedikt’s socks. He then placed both his hands on one of Benedikt’s calves and slowly began to knead loose the tense knots he found there. He worked skillfully in comfortable, dark silence until he could feel Benedikt relaxing so he withdrew his hands to move to the other calf.

“Did they find him yet?” Benedikt’s weak voice pierced the silence, and the strain of speaking sent him into another violent coughing fit. He twisted his body around to sit up, plucking a tissue from the box and bringing it to his mouth and doubling over. Manuel watched, cringing, as Benedikt groaned and dropped the tissue over the edge of the bed and took a desperate sip of water.

“Wouldn’t tea be better?” Manuel pointed out.

Benedikt set the bottle down and promptly collapsed onto his stomach again, kicking his leg up once to remind Manuel he had not yet massaged that one. “I don’t know. Did they find Mats?”

Manuel did not speak as he took Benedikt’s calf between his hands.

Benedikt appreciated Manuel’s efforts to the greatest, and he felt dirty comparing his best friend’s hands to Mats’, those long, elegant fingers of Mats’, but he couldn’t help it. He craved Mats. He needed Mats. He needed to know that Mats was okay.

And he was also furiously angry at Mats.

As thoughts and images of Mats danced around in his exhausted brain, Benedikt felt a familiar sensation growing between his legs and shame overtook him.

“Stop, Manu,” he pleaded. He couldn’t have Manuel touching him in any platonic way while he was getting hot for Mats Hummels. It was wrong. It was horrible and wrong to be getting hot for Mats Hummels right now in the first place.

Manuel snatched his hands away, taken aback. “What’s wrong?”

“Tell me if they found Mats yet,” Benedikt uttered throatily.

Manuel swallowed, looking anywhere in the deeply darkening room but at his best friend. He couldn’t avoid Benedikt’s persistent question any longer.

“They found him, but...but he was sort of a mess, Benni. They took him to the hospital. That’s all I know.”


	25. Dark Memories

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mats has a minor accident..

There was a dull throbbing in his stomach and arm, harmonizing with the buzz and flow of machines to create an unsettling melody. For a second, he panicked because he couldn’t see anything. But then he opened his eyes and the room slowly swam into vision.

Sunlight filtered into the dim, gray room through a sad window on his left. There was a single armchair decorated with a pillow and blanket, their position signalizing that they had been used, and a small, boxy television across from where he lay. On his right there was a wall and around the corner of the wall there was a short distance to a door that led somewhere he didn’t know.

Two tall, complex machines with lots of tubes twisted all around themselves stood intimidatingly on either side of his bed. Each of them led to their own injection in his upper left arm. The more his brain became accustomed to his new surroundings, the heavier the felt, the more throbbing pain he felt. His head weighed a thousand pounds and his arm and stomach were on fire all over again, burning, stinging, and singing away. His right arm was wrapped in a thick bandage and though he couldn’t see his stomach on account of the dreary white sheet that blanketed him, he assumed that his stomach was wrapped as well. The rest of him felt numb, so he wasn’t sure whether the burning was his imagination or not.

As he became more aware, as his senses returned in waves of numb dullness blocked out by morphine or oxycodone or whatever they’d given him, he noticed that he had a terrible stomach ache.

 _I’m going to puke,_ Mats thought dully.

Fortunately, there was a large basin sat beside him. Unfortunately, he wasn’t sure how he was going to reach it seeing as he couldn’t move an inch, his limbs having succumbed to rusty deadweights.

There was a button on the side of his nightside. A call button. If he could just inch over and get the tip of his finger on it, he could press it and a nurse would come to move the basin in front of him--

With a sweat-inducing effort, Mats stretched his left arm to its maximum flexibility to reach the button, the injections shifting and poking around feebly in his veins from the movement. One final push and he’d reach the button -- _There._

At the same time the button sunk down then floated smoothly back up beneath his fingers, he felt another wave sloshing noisily through his stomach, but this one was different. It was lower and further towards his back, and this one was more uncomfortable; it burned, it felt --

He wasn’t going to puke. He was going to shit himself.

Panic overtook him in an instant. He couldn’t let this happen, no way he would let this happen. He tried to heave himself out of the bed but it was impossible, he was tangled and trapped and locked down. His heart and breath raced dangerously fast, he was getting dizzy from the efforts and his clammy skin was now coated in a thin layer of sweat. All the while, that same area continued to balloon with discomfort and he had to release the pressure soon, he couldn’t hold on much longer--

“I’m going to have diarrhea!” he panicked the moment a young, brunette nurse glided into his room.

“Okay, calm down, it’s okay…” she rushed to his side as he squirmed around and he wasn’t quite sure how he managed to get out of the bed but he did. His vision was blackening from the sudden change in position and his head swam around, threatening to drown the rest of his body. He felt hot and cold at the same time, perspiration coating his indecisive skin and making him shiver violently.

“I’m not going to make it!” he moaned as he was dragged around to the bathroom which turned out to be hidden behind the wall on his left, the two machines tagging along behind him.

“You’ll make it, you’ll be fine.” The nurse thrusted the door open, the toilet just mere feet away, but that’s when Mats knew he wasn’t going to make it. He managed only one golem-like lurch into the tiled bathroom away from the carpet before he was shitting himself shamelessly, and he couldn’t even concentrate on how crude it felt seeping down his leg because a split second later he was extravagantly vomiting an orange liquid.

And then it was all over. The waves in his stomach were gone, but he was now covered in his own rather vulgar bodily waste. Just looking down at himself and the fetid odor leaking into his nose made him want to do it all over again.

The nurse pushed him down to sit unsteadily on the lid of the toilet, rolling the machines behind him. “Oh, honey bear...don’t feel bad, the drugs they’re giving you do have some nasty side effects,” she cooed, tugging his vomit-soaked hospital gown over his head and dropping it aside then moving to his much more repulsive boxers. Her hands were confident and gentle through it all, but Mats was feeling too awful to feel sorry for her.

Before he could comprehend what was happening, he was ass-naked and howling something about Benni.

The nurse was trailing something cool and wet up and down his putrid leg. “I’m afraid I don’t know who you’re talking about, baby doll.”

Mats caught a glance of himself in the mirror. He looked rotten, his hair and eyes and face were decaying and discolored and wet and gaunt, vomit speckling around the corners of his ghastly lips. “I want to die,” he moaned incoherently. “What happened to me? Am I in a mental ward?”

The nurse paused the clean-up process for a second to sigh and fix the abject boy with a look of deep pity. “You’re not in a mental ward.”

“I think you should take me to one,” Mats suggested vaguely.

The nurse picked up another wet cloth and continued scrubbing Mats clean of the foul substance. “Do you want to see your family?” she asked, hoping to distract the boy from whatever he was thinking about or trying to remember until he could talk to someone who was qualified to explain this to him.

“Wait till Benni finds out I shit myself…” he groaned in response.

“It wasn’t your fault, sweetie cakes,” the nurse insisted. “Don’t be embarrassed.”

 _Oh, but it is your fault because you’re the one who did this to yourself,_ an echoey voice countered.

 _What’d I do, though?_ Mats thought back.

Once Mats was fresh and clean, the nurse having given him a head-to-toe sponge bath and a new gown to wear, he felt much better. She gave him a cup of water to rinse the filth out of his mouth, which he did, and he was able to scoot across the room and wedge himself back into bed by himself, the nurse only necessary to push the machines behind him. The sheets felt cool and refreshing against his skin, the mattress deep and welcoming after the being absent from its comfort.

“You may throw up again, sugar pie, because we have to keep you hydrated, but I don’t think you’ll have any more diarrhea. I’ll move this basin closer to you, and if you need anything else just let me know, okay?” the nurse cooed as she adjusted his pillow and sheet.

“Deal,” Mats agreed. He didn’t even care about the stupid frilly nicknames, he was just glad Benni was safe. He held out his hand for a fist bump, and the nurse seemed amused as she tapped her fist against his. “If Benni wants to visit, he can come in but I don’t want anyone else in here.”

The nurse looked apologetic as she turned to leave Mats to his privacy. “Well, your parents are allowed to enter whenever they wish since you’re under eighteen…”

Mats waved his hand aside. “That’s okay. I just want to see Benni. If he’s out there, would you mind bringing him in?”

The nurse assured him that she would before exiting, praying to god that someone called Benni was here because the poor boy seemed awfully keen on seeing him.

But Benedikt Höwedes was not there. Mats waited and waited for him to come, concentrating furiously on not puking again because he’d rather not have a basin of his stomach’s rejected contents next to him when Benni came. He waited and waited and waited for a fair-haired, freckled boy to emerge from behind the wall but no such thing happened. His hopes rose infinitely when he heard a light knock on the door before it opened, but it was only his mom, who looked as though she hadn’t slept in weeks, followed by his dad who didn’t look much better. Kira was at home with Natalie, the girl who lived next door and occasionally babysat for them. Although Mats would’ve appreciated his sister’s company, he had an instinct that there was a good reason she was not brought along.

Mr. Hummels confined himself to the armchair, unspeaking, but Mrs. Hummels directed her path straight for her son and immediately began smoothing his hair back from his forehead, all the words and emotions not needing to be expressed because they were understood regardless. Mats’ eyelids began to grow heavy again and he felt himself drifting off into sleep, questions trapezing about his mind in different shapes and colors and he wanted to understand why he was here, what happened, and where Benni was…he wished Benni were here, with him. He wanted to be able to protect him.

“How do you think he’s going to take it?” he heard a familiar voice murmur; he assumed it belonged to the person whose hand was resting on his forehead.

“That’s what I’m afraid of…” a deeper voice responded from farther away.

The grim voices grew dimmer and dimmer as Mats slipped away into the world of sheer imagination. He couldn’t make out the words and, eventually, could hear them no longer.

“He’ll be an outpatient. It’ll be just like going to school every morning and coming home in the afternoons, but he’ll still get the treatment he needs. I’d be more worried if he had to do the residential program…”

“Still, he’s not going to think much of participating in an adolescent behavioral and psychiatric program, even if it’s only a half day for a couple of weeks. You know he’s going to fight us on this.”

“Maybe he’ll be less reluctant once he understands what he did. He has to go, though, regardless. He needs this.”

\-----

_Time is meaningless. Time is a sphere, and you’re ricocheting off its borders and around its center, unable to pinpoint anything to a line or a ray. You know you’re remembering something that happened to you, that you did to yourself, but you don’t know whether it happened before you went to the hospital and that’s why you’re here, or after you left. You think it happened before because you have a knack that you’re still in the hospital, but past, present, and future is meaningless so you can’t be sure._

_You’re remembering. This is a memory. You’re not reliving it but you’re remembering._

_You had a knife. That you’re sure of. You definitely had a knife, but you don’t know why and you don’t know where you were going. There are lots of things you don’t know, but maybe the reason you don’t know in your memory is because you didn’t know while it was happening to you. Maybe you weren’t going anywhere. Maybe the reason you had the knife was because you weren’t going anywhere._

_This is what you did. You put the knife to your own skin. You lifted up your shirt and you pierced your own skin with the chiseled object. This is what you did. You carved a shape into your stomach, a shape you didn’t have to improvise because it was already there. You stabbed the blade in deep so you can safely assume that there was a lot of blood, but you never saw it with your own eyes because you weren’t seeing, you were feeling. You tore the blade through your body savagely and you didn’t care what else it did to you as long as you could leave behind what you most hated about yourself. And this is what you did. When you had successfully ripped apart your own flesh, you scraped wildly at the gash and it was hot and wet and it sizzled and exploded in agony but you didn’t care because all you did was smear it beside you, whatever it was._

_And then your arm. You did the same thing to your arm because you hated it, too. You wanted it to be gone. You wanted the scars to be gone, and even if that meant you had to make new scars. You wanted them to be your own scars, not ones that you’d been given. This is what you did._

_And you were far, far away from him. He was safe. He was safe, and you were protecting him by ridding yourself of that deviled part of you. You couldn’t hurt him anymore._

_This is your memory. That’s what happened, and now you understand. You understand why you’re here in the hospital and why he’s not here with you._

_You’re still ricocheting around the time sphere, but now you understand where you are. A cry of anguish floats off your bone dry lips._

\-----

Mats woke up suddenly in the dead of the night drenched in his own sweat, clammy and screaming distastefully. He leaned over the edge of his bed and vomited copiously into the basin, the hideous stabbing pain in his stomach and arm bubbling all around the rest of his insides and choking him, flattening him.

That’s what he did to himself. He had tried to tear himself apart from the outside in.

And even if he hadn’t meant to, that’s still what he did. That didn’t make it hurt any less. Indeed, it made it hurt more because if he wasn’t doing it on purpose, what was there to limit him?

Mats took several deep breaths, filling his lungs with air then blowing it out slowly. He wiped his sweaty brow off with the sheet, devoting all his attention to the serenity of his surroundings and trying to breathe it in to quell his flashback. The steady hum of the machines, the dark, silky night. It was all okay, he was going to be okay and Benni was okay too. He wished he recalled where he’d last had his phone because he needed to call Benni and hear his voice. He couldn’t blame Benni for not coming, but he was still annoyed about it. Wouldn’t Benni have wanted to make sure he was okay?

_No, because I hurt him and ran away from him._

He knew he had a duffel bag at the foot of the bed. If he could get to it, he could look for his phone. But he still had the machines hooked up to him, and he couldn’t move out of bed unless he had someone to help him move them. Maybe he could hit the call button and find out whether he could get these awful things away from him; certainly, he must have enough drugs and liquids in his system by now. Plus, there was the fact that he had just puked again; the foul taste of acid burned in his throat and nostrils and he wanted some cranberry juice. It couldn’t hurt to call for these reasons, though he really just needed to have his phone.

He had a lot to talk with Benni about.

\---

At 2:38 on Wednesday morning, Benedikt woke up and had a mini heart attack from the sound of his phone ringing in his ear, piercing through the stillness of the air like a knife.

He really needed to change his ringtone to something else other than ‘Xylophone’. It was sort of an eerie tune to wake up to in the middle of the witching hour.

Clumsily, he reached under his pillow (he kept his phone under his pillow) and squinted at the screen as the brightness made his eyes ache and itch.

_Incoming call from Mats Hummels_

Benedikt pressed ignore and shoved the device back under his pillow, rolling over in his bed to fall back asleep. He hadn’t slept well at all the past two nights; he had trouble getting comfortable and finding a position from which he could still breathe without his lungs getting tied up. The slightest crack from outside his realm would snatch him back into the conscious world, but the biggest culprit for waking him up was his own struggling body. He would wake up needing to cough hard for several minutes and rid his nose of the sticky substance that had built up there.

Benedikt used his wakeful state as an opportunity to blow his nose so he wouldn’t need to wake up later to do it. His head pounded from the disturbance and he longed to get back to sleep. But two minutes later, his phone buzzed with a text message and he cursed himself for not switching it to silent. He pulled it out from under his pillow to do just that, but the screen was still lit up with the text, drawing his attention.

_From: Mats Hummels_

_Need to talk to you_

_To: Mats Hummels_

_I don’t want to talk to you Mats. Please go see a psychiatrist or something because you have some serious issues_


	26. Falling for You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Benedikt's presentation doesn't go so well...

On Thursday, Benedikt returned to school.

His foot was healing beautifully, the bruises on his stomach were fading back into his pale tone, the aches in his upper arms from being restrained by the Officer Malks had melted away, and he was proud to say that he had not had a breath-snatching cough attack since yesterday morning. The color had returned to his face and the blush to his cheeks; he was fresh and bright eyed. He felt light now that he was no longer plagued with a constant headache. He’d even bothered to clean up his room a little; he’d picked up all his phlegm-infested tissues from the floor and thrown them away and shoved his stuffed animals into the closet (save for Jambalaya, who stayed right where he belonged on Benedikt’s bed). And he had not texted Mats Hummels since Wednesday morning; Mats had not replied to his text so he graciously did not initiate any further discussion. He needed a break from Mats, and he had damn earned one.

He had, rather stupidly, left his backpack at school on Monday, but Manuel had picked it up for him and dropped it off upon request (it seemed like Manuel was turning into Benedikt’s personal backpack caterer or something of that sort). Before he left on Thursday morning, he tossed in a small pack of Kleenex just in case, a bottle of iced tea, a bag of pita chips secured with a clasp and a Gladware container with hummus as well as a few dollars for lunch.

This was his new life. His new life without Mats Hummels, take two.

The day went well. It felt normal as could be. He sat with his friends at lunch and munched on his pita chips, Manuel helping himself to more than his fair share and dipping them in copious amounts of Nutella so that Benedikt had lots of extra hummus but not enough chips to go with them. So he snagged a few of Mesut’s pretzels to finish off the hummus.

He received his test back in precalculus. 94%. Not bad at all.

He sang well in choir, his throat and lungs felt clear and powerful for the first time in days. After class, he approached his director to apologize for missing the auditions.

Mrs. Corcoran smiled at him understandingly. “It’s alright, kiddo. I get that we all have those days. I take it that you’re feeling better?”

“I am, much better. Thank you,” Benedikt returned honestly. And it was the truth; he felt like the old Benedikt. The _before Mats_ Benedikt.

Granted, he felt like the ‘before Mats’ Benedikt with something...missing, something important that he just couldn’t put his finger on. But he chose to disregard that nagging feeling and attribute it to the fact that he had been absent for nearly three full days of school. He knew Mats was okay. He didn’t know whether Mats was still at the hospital or not, but he knew he was in good hands.

In chemistry, Mr. Löw gestured for him to come over the second after he’d walked in the door. Benedikt swallowed and obeyed, taking a wild guess at what Mr. Löw wished to speak with him about and hoping he was wrong. He stood before the man, chewing his lip in anticipation and swinging his arms back and forth in a jerky motion.

Mr. Löw regarded him with solemnity. “How are you doing?” he asked sternly.

“Uhm,” Benedikt stammered, not accustomed to any small talk from the chemistry teacher. “I’m alright, I guess.”

Mr. Löw fixed him with a look that suggested ‘that’s not what I was referring to but I’ll let the matter drop’. He moved aside a stack of papers he had been grading as if to grace Benedikt with his full attention and spoke to him, quite bluntly, as the rest of the students filed into the classroom, chatting away about who had posted what on Instagram (“She wrote this...and oh my GOD he said that and...blah blah blah…” said Thomas to anyone who would listen) and what a bitch Ms. Byrne was because _did you see the reading assignment for tonight, it was literally 137 pages and who the_ fuck _actually would finish that between sports and clubs and whatnot…_ the energetic chatter representative of the eagerness to end the school day provided a solid privacy barrier for Benedikt and his teacher.

“It’s necessary for you to know, Benedikt, that Mr. Hummels will not be returning to school for the next few weeks, so I’ll give you the choice if you wish to present your project or not. I’m assuming that you and Mr. Hummels did manage to complete the assignment?” Mr. Löw raised an eyebrow.

“Yes, sir, we did,” Benedikt lied. We. _We._ He was not so much focused on his logistical fib as much as on what Mr. Löw had just informed him about Mats not being at school for the next few weeks.

Was he injured that badly? What had happened?

“Excellent. I will grade the content of your project as it is and leave the presentation portion out of the gradebook if you elect not to present,” Mr. Löw reiterated.

“I don’t mind presenting without Mats,” Benedikt spoke without his brain’s agreement. Why did he just say that? Of course he’d take the opportunity to miss a presentation if he could, especially this one since he’d done such a mediocre job on the poster...Though it was true that that would be unfair to the other students who had all had to present whether their projects were ‘A’ quality or ‘F’ quality and whether their partners were competent or not. Benedikt just wasn’t that kind of person who would take advantage of special treatment.

Mr. Löw’s mouth formed into the closest thing to a genuine smile Benedikt had ever seen on the man. “Your work ethic is something to be proud of, Mr. Höwedes. I’ll have you go just after the bell rings and everyone’s settled in.”

“Sounds good, thank you, Mr. Löw,” Benedikt nodded and started for his desk to fish the poster out of his backpack. He needed to roll it up to fit it inside and it had crumpled a bit over the past few days, but it was still legible. He dropped his backpack on his chair and set the poster on his desk to attempt to smooth it out, trying not to let his eyes mingle with box #5 too long and avoiding the eye contact that Manuel was trying to register with him.

God, this poster was awful. Just awful. This presentation was going to be absolutely humiliating.

Fumbling with his poster face down against his chest, Benedikt placed himself at the front of the classroom, shifting his balance from one leg to the other anxiously. His mouth and throat felt parched and he suddenly registered a great desire to cough; he swallowed the itch as best he could and bit his mouth shut. He didn’t know where to look, students who were already in their seats were watching him curiously and he wasn’t quite sure why he was so nervous...he was usually comfortable with public speaking and even enjoyed sharing his knowledge and opinions. But today, he discovered a nervous hot sweat forming on his skin, concentrated around his underarms, and his ears and face were heating up dangerously. He was also a bit lightheaded, his heart pounding like the wings of a hummingbird against his ribcage so he forced himself to take several deep breaths... _Get your shit together, Benedikt._

He felt as if he were standing up there for years, more and more pairs of eyes becoming trained on him after the dreaded bell rang and the rest of the students focused and settled in. He should’ve at least taken a drink before he came up here, then maybe he wouldn’t feel like this…

“We are going to begin class today with Mr. Höwedes’ presentation. Mr. Höwedes, when you’re ready...” Mr. Löw announced, arranging his gradebook in front of him with a pen in hand.

Now a heavy silence enveloped the room as Benedikt’s classmates awaited his start. With clumsy, shaky hands, he twisted his poster around and held it out in front of him. A few sniggers were exchanged around the audience and Benedikt felt a chilly wave cruise through him from head to toe, condensing around his heart and speeding it up even more to the frequency of a gamma ray and designating sparks to glimmer around in front of his eyes and prickle his brain. _They were laughing at him and his project_.

Benedikt cleared his throat as subtly as he could because he really could do without having an uncontrollable coughing fit in front of the entire class. His eyes watered with the efforts of restraining it, so he opened them wide to let the dry air draw out the moisture.

“It’s upside down, Benni,” someone finally spoke up, amusement dancing in their tone.

Benedikt’s insides were practically swirling around at this point and he thought his head may float right off his body. “Oh, right…” he mumbled, his tongue flopping around uselessly in his mouth and when he attempted to flip it over, the poster slipped out of his unsteady hands and flopped to the floor with a light _thud_.

More sniggers. He tried to think of the laughter as friendly, that they were simply amused with his clumsy antics, but all he could think about was what a mistake this whole thing had been...not only his creation of the poster, but the whole thing with Mats Hummels too...Mats was in the _hospital_ and he refused to visit him or even talk to him, and here he was at school freaking out over a stupid presentation instead.

Benedikt bent over to pick up his poster, the blood rushing around his head and trilling through his ears much too quickly. And when he straightened up again, that’s when he started seeing black and green and purple all swirling around in front of him, staining his vision and making him feel freezing cold and numb, his fingers and legs and arms of no use to him anymore because they were trembling too much. And with one last cascading wave of sparks, he forgot how to balance and he didn’t know what to do because here he was at the front of the classroom with all eyes on him, he couldn’t hear anymore because of the ringing in his ears and he was about to…

He had a vague recollection of someone leaping out of their chair and rushing over to him before everything fell into a deep darkness.

\-----

Some people gasped. Others looked away. Others felt as though they should help, but didn’t know what they could do without getting in the way. Miroslav Klose was the one to hustle to the front of the room and catch Benedikt’s rather wet underarms before his head could collide with the cold, hard ground.

The boy scout lay the blond gently on the floor, kneeling above him. The first thing he did was check for breathing and a pulse. Both were present. Of course they would be; his classmate had only fainted. He would be perfectly fine. He would probably regain consciousness within a minute.

“He’s fine, he’s only passed out,” Miroslav reported, his confident tone serving as somewhat of a reassurance to the dead silent classroom and low murmurs filled the void in the air. Mr. Löw had just been about to call an ambulance; as a teacher, it was his job to jump to the worst possible case scenario and prepare for it.

Setting down the phone, Mr. Löw emerged from his desk and approached Miroslav. He folded his hands behind his back, hovering above the boy scout as he expertly tended to his classmate. He trusted Miroslav Klose. He was not a teacher to panic and cause a big conniption within the class.

“I could use a damp towel for his forehead,” Miroslav requested as he felt the blond’s clammy, moist skin.

“Draxler,” Mr. Löw commanded flatly without as much as a lookup. He heard Julian Draxler scurry out of his seat and off to the back of the room where the lab stations were to do as he was told. And as he heard the boy snatch a brown paper towel from the dispenser and wet it under the sink, he thought about what he’d said to Benedikt Höwedes on the second day the projects were assigned and wondered if Benedikt had taken his advice a little too seriously...

Benedikt Höwedes...a good kid, that was all.

Julian handed Miroslav a sopping wet towel, which the latter took and proceeded to gently wash away the perspiration from Benedikt’s pale face and cool him down. And just as Miroslav expected, Benedikt recovered after less than a minute, revealing a set of foggy hazel eyes.

Hovering above him were two bright blue eyes, filled with both concern and relief. He was confused. He didn’t know whose eyes they were, and he didn’t know why he was on the floor looking up at them with a pair of hands on either of his shoulders. “What happened?” he croaked.

“You just passed out,” Miroslav informed him, cool and collected as always. “I think we need to get you to the nurse.”

“No, I’m fine,” Benedikt insisted groggily, and even through his haze he still felt as if it was the millionth time those very words had left his lips in the past several days. _I’m fine._ How true was it though?

“You should drink something with sugar and rest,” Miroslav instructed. “Come on, we’ll help you up. You’re okay with standing up?”

Benedikt nodded, and before he knew it, Miroslav and Manuel had helped him to his feet and secured their arms around him, swiftly yet cautiously at the same time. He felt weak, woozy and still slightly dizzy, but Miro and Manu held him firmly and he knew he’d get to lie down again in a few minutes when they arrived at the clinic. Mr. Löw thanked the two of them with sincerity as they hauled Benedikt out of the classroom and into the hallway.

Benedikt caught Manuel’s worried gray eyes, his boyish face glowing with fresh fear.

“Are you alright?”

And for the first time out of the several times he’d been asked that very question or a form of it, Benedikt thought about his answer. He could be honest with his best friend, and he could be honest with Miroslav seeing as he’d just been the one who had prevented him from slicing his head open.

So Benedikt shook his head -- in the slightest so as not to rattle it -- but he still made the action clear. He was NOT alright. He was weak and confused, ashamed and guilty and hurt and he just wanted to take a nap.

Manuel tightened his grip around Benedikt like any good friend would do and he could’ve sworn that Miroslav did the same.

\-----

After a good 20 minutes of resting in the clinic and being forced to drink water, Benedikt returned to class to much interrogation about if he was feeling better. Out of politeness, he told everyone that he was, even if he was still a bit shaky. But really, he was tired of it. He was tired of constantly being asked how he was feeling and if he was okay because it made him feel weak and pathetic, he was tired of people pitying him; his own father even had been overcome with pity for sad little Benedikt. He was tired of falling to the cruel grasps of emotion and sickness and he was tired of being the Benedikt he’d turned into. He wanted to be back to his old self.

His old self without Mats Hummels. Mats Hummels, the stupid kid who just happened to plunge into his life because of _stupid chemistry_.

But at the same time, he wanted Mats Hummels to be in his life too.

And then it hit Benedikt: he was willing to forgive Mats if Mats would forgive him, forgive him for his crimes of rejection.

Benedikt’s thoughts were interrupted by a hand on his back which nearly made him jump out of his seat in surprise. Once his heart had returned from his throat back down into his ribs, he looked up to see Mr. Löw hovering above him. The man indicated the door and Benedikt nodded curtly, understanding what he meant. So Benedikt rose from his desk and crossed the room into the hallway where he had to wait about a minute before Mr. Löw appeared before him.

And that’s then the embarrassment hit Benedikt. That he had passed out in front of his entire chemistry class with all eyes on him, in the class of the strictest teacher in the school. He gulped, his throat feeling like carpet again.

“Did you eat lunch today, Mr. Höwedes?” Mr. Löw asked.

“I did, sir. I don’t know what happened, I don’t usually get nervous but something was bothering me today. I feel fine, though, now, it might’ve just been because I’ve had the flu for a while,” Benedikt rambled, looking bashfully at the ground unable to meet his teacher’s hard eyes. He felt like he was saying the same thing over and over again to everyone who inquired it, that he was fine and it was only because he’d been sick that he was acting peculiarly. Amazingly, he was sliding by with the ‘I had the flu’ reasoning pretty well, and it was truthful reasoning at that. Still, it seemed as if Mr. Löw was always picking him out for all the various issues he was having in chemistry, whether it be his problematic partner or fainting out of the blue and Benedikt was more than a bit embarrassed.

“I don’t want your schoolwork to jeopardize your health, Benedikt. Come to school healthy and well rested and don’t put too much pressure on yourself. I’ve see it happen plenty of times before when students break down because of all the pressure they are under. Take good care of yourself, okay?” Mr. Löw scolded him, and it went unspoken that Benedikt would most certainly not be making up his presentation.

“I will, sir,” Benedikt said, meaning it. He found the courage to look Mr. Löw earnestly in the eye.

“Very well. Thank you, Benedikt, you may go back inside. I need to run to the office to pick up some papers.” And with that, Mr. Löw nodded to Benedikt before the latter gratefully re-entered the classroom and the former was off.

He didn’t believe the Höwedes boy one bit. He knew it had something to do with Hummels, and for that he felt guilty, knowing the little amount of information that he did about Mats Hummels’ situation. But he’d let Höwedes deal with that himself, he wouldn’t intrude and complicate things with the school. Benedikt Höwedes was already under enough stress as it was, and having the school poking its nose in his business would just making things exponentially worse. He’d already talked to Benedikt’s counselor about it, explained to her that the boy was independent and responsible and she assured him that they would stay away unless circumstances became dire.

Despite which Mr. Löw still vowed to keep a watch on the boy.

\-----

The second the bell rang to dismiss class, Benedikt whipped out his phone and punched in a text, pretending to be nonchalant about it but really he’d been mulling this over for the past ten minutes, deciding whether or not to do it, and he ultimately decided for it upon realizing that Mats Hummels was now a part of his life, all feelings set aside.

_To: Mats Hummels  
Let’s talk. Can I come over?_

It took less than a minute for a response to pop up.

_From: Mats Hummels  
I shat myself the other day_

Benedikt had to blink several times to be sure he’d read the message correctly.

_To: Mats Hummels  
Well I fainted in chemistry today in front of everyone. So there’s that_

_From: Mats Hummels  
And i barfed at the same time, it was really invigorating. now since we both barfed we can be barf buddies_

_To: Mats Hummels  
Okay I did NOT need to know that. And no we cannot be barf buddies because that is just weird and idek what that means. Can I come over?_

Benedikt waited for a reply, slowly gathering up his belongings and sipping on his iced tea. The hallway was already bustling was activity and Manuel was waiting for him by the door, but he was in no rush. After all, he needed to have an answer so he could plan the rest of his afternoon…

_To: Mats Hummels  
Mats? You can say no, but I need an answer_

Finally, after Benedikt and Manuel had begun weaving their way through the crowded, teenage body odor scented hallways, making small talk about anything besides Benedikt’s fainting episode and Mats Hummels, he felt his phone vibrate in his hand and glanced down at it immediately.

_From: Mats Hummels  
I’m still at the hospital. I dont know if you want to come here_

_To: Mats Hummels  
Of course I do. I’m on my way now. Be prepared, though, I’m very angry at you_

_From: Mats Hummels  
Figures_


	27. Reunited

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Benedikt visits Mats at the hospital.

When Benedikt arrived home, he dumped his backpack by the front door and clambered upstairs for a fresh change of clothes, ones that weren’t laden in evidence of his passing out today. The more time passed and the more he breathed, the stronger he felt as the weakness littering his body washed away into oblivion. But that also left more room for other emotions; anger for the most part. Anger at Mats.

He wasn’t quite sure what he was going to do when he got there or even why he was going in the first place. To yell at Mats? To be there for him? Or was it just to satisfy his own curiosity about what the hell had happened?

Musing over his intentions, Benedikt pulled on a clean t-shirt and a beanie -- it was relatively warm outside, but his hair was sticky and rumpled and he thought it looked gross. He fitted a watch, a Christmas present from his parents that he seldom wore, around his wrist only because his phone was low on battery and he always liked to know what time it was. He visited the bathroom to give his face a quick rinse, then proceeded downstairs to grab a banana and find his mom to ask her for ride to the hospital.

Mrs. Höwedes was, of course, in her office, enraptured with whatever fascinating data was presented on her computer screen. She was a biological analyst, and it was her job to reason with all sorts of unfathomable numbers involving DNA and other molecules Benedikt didn’t quite understand and sort them into workable statistics. Benedikt stationed himself in the doorway, waiting for the right time to interrupt which never seemed to come.

“What is it, Benedikt?” she finally asked, sensing his presence without even needing to shift her focus away from the screen.

“Could you give me a ride to the hospital so I can visit my friend?” he requested, running his hand up and down the door frame absentmindedly and watching two birds having a go at each other out the window.

Mrs. Höwedes exhaled slowly. “I’m right in the middle of something right now… Can you walk or catch the bus? Or don’t you have some friends who drive?” She looked over at Benedikt at this point, irritation flashing across her expression despite her best efforts to conceal it.

Benedikt raised an eyebrow slightly. “Why don’t just let me take the car if you can’t go?”

“You know I get nervous with you driving on your own,” she sighed.

“Mom, I have my license, I am _legally allowed_ to drive, it’s just that you and dad never let me so I never get to practice,” Benedikt protested. Why was everything with his parents so difficult? Why did it seem like it was their mission to derail him?

Shaking her head in conquest, Mrs. Höwedes turned back to her screen and began to save her work and close windows. “Okay, Benedikt. Get in the car and I’ll be there in a minute.”

“Thanks, mom,” Benedikt returned graciously before whipping around, snatching the car keys off the rack and remembering to pick up a banana from the kitchen before settling himself in the driver’s seat of his mother’s car. It smelled like her perfume in here. Benedikt wrinkled his nose.

He found the lever that would push the chair back and grant himself some more space for his longer legs, then he peeled his banana and took an enormous bite, chewing on it thoughtfully. It had been so long since he’d last drove. He wasn’t even sure he remembered how to drive.

As he finished off his banana and dropped the peel on the console between the two front seats, Mrs. Höwedes pulled the passenger door open and climbed in beside him, placing her purse delicately in her lap as if she were about to go to a party instead of dropping her son off at the hospital.

“Remember that this isn’t like your father’s car, you use the stick to shift gears because the car doesn’t shift automatically --”

“Yes mom, I know,” Benedikt gritted, sticking the key in its slot with a satisfying grind. He turned the volume on the radio all the way down when his mom’s favorite news station came blaring through the speakers and the ride commenced in a smooth silence.

Benedikt was not a bad driver. Admittedly, he was not as confident and endeavorous as Mats was behind the wheel; he was jerky and out of practice. But he wasn’t bad. He remembered to shift gears when he needed to, and he only stalled out once.

“Has your cold gotten any better?”

Benedikt mumbled an indistinguishable response, still irked at having just stalled out after doing so well.

“What did you say?”

“Yes,” Benedikt grumbled irritably, pressing on the gas far too aggressively after the light turned green. He quickly eased his foot off and locked into a conservative speed.

“I know you’re frustrated about what happened to your friend, but please don’t take it out on your family,” his mom warned.

Benedikt rolled his eyes dramatically enough to make certain that his mom noticed the gesture. He almost wanted to say ‘what family?’, but held his tongue because that was crossing the line from harshness into cruelty.

“Benedikt...” she said sternly.

A flash of defiance rolled through Benedikt and he lifted his hands up for a second before letting them fall back onto the steering wheel with a rounded slap. “What did I do?!”

“I don’t like your tone of voice--”

“Okay, well maybe if _your_ friend practically attacked you then ran away and ended up having to stay in the hospital for three days, you wouldn’t be in the best mood either! I am stressed out and aggravated, hell I have been for the past week, and to top it all off I fainted at school today, so please cut me a little bit of slack!” Benedikt spat indignantly, barely containing the unnecessary volume threatening to spill out of his voice. He swung the wheel around and pulled into the hospital’s lot, braking unpleasantly as he swerved around to the main entrance.

“You fainted at school today? You didn’t tell me that,” was Mrs. Höwedes’ response, sounding worried and a little offended.

“Yu-up,” Benedikt replied, popping the ‘p’. “Anyways, I’m gonna go. Have a great afternoon.” He jumped out of the car and slammed the door behind him, rearing across the front of the car and onto the sidewalk, leaving his mom bewildered and helpless.

Mrs. Höwedes closed her eyes for a moment, letting it all sink in before she got up to occupy the vacant driver’s seat.

She hated seeing her son like this, unreachable and cranky and ultimately in pain. She knew a little about Mats Hummels and how Benedikt was dealing with the wrath of his actions. She had even allowed Benedikt to miss school for several days while he recovered from both the emotional hurt and the nasty cold he’d been battling. But she didn’t know what else to do about it. She didn’t know how to act around him. They had distanced themselves so long ago that she no longer felt like his mother, and she wasn’t sure if Benedikt really wanted to reestablish that delicate relationship.

She decided that she’d wait at the library while Benedikt wrapped up his visit then take him out somewhere to eat. It had been far too long.

\-----

Benedikt pressed the button and waited for the elevator, interpreting his bland surroundings and wondering how someone as unwilling to accept any form of support as Mats Hummels could possibly have ended up here.

He entered the elevator after an elderly lady being pushed in a wheelchair and a couple that looked to be about in their 20s, probably doing the same thing that he was. Benedikt waited his turn while the male half of the young couple pressed the button for the second floor and then asked the middle aged woman pushing the wheelchair what floor she needed. He then turned to Benedikt to pose the same question.

“Third, thank you,” Benedikt replied, pleasantly surprised.

The elevator lurched upward, forcing Benedikt to grab onto the railing because he was still a tad dizzy. As he studied the tiled pattern on the floor, he let the argument with his mom dissolve and replaced it with a freshly fueled anger towards Mats. How dare Mats do something like this to him, disregard and imperil his emotions like this and then expect him to jump on board when Mats changed his mind and decided it would be convenient to talk again at 2:38 in the morning?

Soon, Benedikt was the only one left in the elevator and the doors swished open, revealing the third floor. It didn’t look much different from the first two floors, with the exception of the first floor hosting a great, fancy lobby with a cafeteria and a gift shop. Benedikt considered picking up a cheesy get well gift for Mats, like one of those stupid bears or lollipops, but he concluded that his presence alone was already far more than what Mats deserved.

Benedikt marched purposefully through the desolate hallways and checked all the room numbers, searching for 313 for that was the room number he’d been told Mats was in at the front desk. 303. 305. Good. He was headed in the right direction.

313\. Benedikt halted before the door and contemplated what he was about to do and say for precisely half a second before he practically sliced the door handle downwards and threw it open.

It rebounded off a door stopper. Benedikt took a step forward into the room. He couldn’t see anything past the bathroom that was on his immediate right. He would have to venture further into the room.

Wouldn’t Mats be curious as to who had just forced their way into his room? Benedikt assumed-- well, it was Thursday, Mats’ parents’ late day, so he _knew_ \-- that his parents weren’t back from work. And unless Mats had called for a nurse, then Benedikt couldn’t think of anyone else who’d want to visit him.

The thought made Benedikt feel a little sad. Some of the ferocity rocketing through his bloodstream halted mid-shot and dive bombed to the bottom of his stomach.

So Mats either knew it was Benedikt. Or Mats wasn’t here at all. Or he was asleep.

But a great sheet of fluorescent lighting masked the speckled white ceiling, so unless this hospital lacked any sort of conscience to conserve energy (Benedikt bitterly thought of his dad and his stupid climate change work), then someone was probably in here.

Benedikt buried his hands in the pockets of his shorts, his assortment of bands and bracelets being pushed up off his wrist bones as he did so, and shuffled further into the contagiously dreary space. He took a glance around the corner of the bathroom, and what he saw made his breath hitch a little and his heart swell to twice its size.

Mats Hummels was seated with his back against an arrangement of white pillows on the bed. He was wearing his One Direction shirt, which he’d evidently done some improvisation on by cutting off the sleeves and trimming the neck into a ‘v’ shape. A book was propped up against his legs, which Benedikt easily recognized as _Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone_. But Benedikt didn’t truly relinquish all of the grudge he’d held against the curly haired boy until his eyes wandered away from the cover of the book and up his torso to his precious face.

A pair of smart-looking, black-rimmed glasses was perched atop Mats’ nose, and two Apple buds were tucked into his ears. His head bobbed rhythmically up and down to the beat of whatever song he was listening to, his eyes not taking even a second to divert from the spell of the words on the page.

A string of every single curse word that Benedikt had ever learned cartwheeled across his mind, waving neon flags, then disappeared.

Who was this boy and what had he done with Mats Hummels and his sleeves?

Benedikt was so enraptured by the fucking glasses that he hardly took notice of the sling imprinted with red and green dinosaurs encasing Mats’ right arm.

“Boo,” said Benedikt.

Mats broke his gaze away from _Harry Potter_ and startled a little when he saw Benedikt leaning against the corner, one foot crossed over the other and the peak of his dirty blond hair poking out from underneath a striped beanie. One of Mats’ earbuds had tumbled out onto his lap in his momentary surprise so he plucked out the other one too.

“I didn’t know you could read,” Benedikt teased, a smirk playing on his lips and glinting his hazel eyes. He withdrew a hand from his pocket to tug the beanie off his head then let it fall back to his side.

Mats squinted harrowingly at him, setting his book carefully to the side. The truth was that his boredom had grown so intense (he’d watched every show on the television twice through and wandered the halls so frequently he was sure he’d be able to master them blindfolded) that he’d resorted to picking up the book his mom had brought for him, and he hadn’t read an actual book in so long that he’d forgotten he had trouble seeing the words and was grateful she had sent along his glasses as well. So instead of telling all of this to Benedikt, he went with, “You have really bad hat hair.”

Benedikt’s freckled cheeks flushed crimson and he threw up his other hand-- the one not containing the beanie-- to emphatically smooth his hair out. Mats sunk his teeth into his bottom lip to suppress what he knew would’ve been a rather unmanly giggle. Still in the process of flattening his hair, Benedikt crossed to the armchair and gingerly took a seat, muttering something that sounded remarkably like “at least I’m wearing sleeves…”

The room smelled stale, sad, and still. He didn’t understand how Mats could stand being cooped up in here for so long. As the thought briefed his mind, he apparently let it fall from his lips without his notice because the next thing he knew, Mats was casually supplying the answer to his ponderings.

“I was cleared last night because they unhooked the machines yesterday morning and I didn’t die or anything. But my parents wanted me to stay here today and tomorrow too because they can’t keep an eye on me while they’re at work and I don’t start my program until Monday.”

Benedikt popped up with a million questions. His mouth unhinged and closed again and he must’ve looked like an idiot, but he didn’t know what to ask first. Mats regarded him lightly, his dark eyes emphasized by the rectangular frames surrounding them. Benedikt couldn’t help but notice that his perfect cheekbones were just a bit more visible than the last time he’d seen Mats, his brilliantly hued skin a shade paler and dinged with gray. He must’ve not been eating a whole lot during his stay here, but Benedikt didn’t blame him; the hospital was not known for its cuisine, and if Mats had been hooked up to machines, then they were most likely providing him with the medicine and nutrients and water he needed anyway. Benedikt recalled the time he’d broken his leg while skiing and he’d needed to go under anesthesia for surgery; the injections shooting liquid into his body had made him very nauseous when he woke up and reluctant to eat anything.

“What about Kira?” he blurted.

“She has a babysitter,” Mats said offhandedly.

“Julian?”

“No, this girl who lives next door to us. She’s only in middle school, but she’ll probably do a better job taking care of my sister than I would, anyway. I don’t understand why my parents can’t just hire her every Thursday,” Mats shrugged.

 _Because you really are a great brother when you want to be,_ Benedikt thought.

“Why do they want to keep an eye on you? And what kind of program are you going to? What happened, Mats? Tell me. Tell me everything,” everything else came out of Benedikt’s mouth in a fervent jumble. Really, if he used logic then he could figure it out for himself. But he didn’t want to force himself to think those things about Mats Hummels. It just wasn’t right.

Mats simply hung his head and Benedikt could hear a clock somewhere in the dullness of the space. _Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick._ A warning. Counting down to something.

“What’s going on?” Benedikt softly encouraged him. He was getting worried.

But all Mats did was stare at the blankness of the white sheets through the lens of his glasses.

“Mats?”

“Will you come sit next to me instead of being all the way over there?” Mats finally replied, a childish whine hinting his tone.

Benedikt’s heart did a double thump at Mats’ request and he couldn’t figure out why at first. Then he remembered.

The last time he’d been that close to Mats, Mats had hurt him. He had physically hurt him.

“You...you don’t have to sit right next to me. But maybe come sit at the end of the bed at least?” Mats said bleakly.

Benedikt shook his head, flustered. He couldn’t bring himself any closer to Mats. He couldn’t.

“Why not?” Hopeless. Pathetic.

_Do you really not know why, Mats Hummels?_

But Benedikt swallowed his fear-- and his pride-- and hurried the short distance from the armchair to the end of the bed, as if the danger lay behind him and not ahead. Mats winced in pain as he crawled out of the little cove he’d created himself and scooted to the foot of the bed, seating himself next to Benni, admittedly without permission but he figured it was alright because he left plenty of space between them -- so much space that he was practically falling off the edge.

When Benni didn’t move back or tell him off for his bravado, he scooted a fraction of an inch closer.

And Benni flinched.

His eyelids batted in anticipation, his body shuddered, and then it was over. But Mats couldn’t have missed it. Benni flinched because he was subconsciously scared of what Mats would do to him.

“It’s okay, I’m not going to hurt you,” Mats hushed, his voice wavering dangerously.

“You already did.”

“I told you, Benni, I didn’t mean to, I didn’t know what I was doing--”

Benedikt whirled around to glare at Mats, his thin lips quivering and his eyes flashing. “That doesn’t matter. Stop making excuses for yourself. What you did to me was violent and borderline abusive and you’re really lucky that I’m coming back to you and haven’t got you in trouble for _all_ the shit you’ve done and not only this. How do I know you’re not going to do it again? How do I know you’re not going to do anything worse?!”

“Because I’m being sent to a program for fucked up kids like me and they’re going to drug me up so hard that I can’t do it again! It’s not all about you, _Benedikt_. Did you notice that I have my arm in a sling? Did you ever think about asking why, or are you only capable of thinking about yourself?!” Mats barked, brandishing his injured right arm like a weapon. “Since you are so fucking self-centered, I’ll just go ahead and tell you--”

Benedikt was on his feet, hovering threateningly above Mats. “How _dare_ you accuse me of only thinking of myself! Do you _know_ how upset I was when I found out you--”

“ _It was because I didn’t want to hurt you that I ended up digging out my fucking bone from my arm,_ ” Mats bellowed, pure and untampered malevolence scathing within his every word.

Benedikt’s expression went from outraged to downright petrified in less than a second. Mats thought he was either going to be sick or burst into tears, so he gathered Benni’s slim torso in his good arm and pulled him into his lap.

And then he shrieked in agony.

His stomach. His fucking stomach. It burned like the fires of hell.

Benedikt jumped up like he’d landed in lava and collapsed onto the armchair, clinging onto it for dear life. Mats’ face had shifted to a nasty shade of whitish-green faster than he could let out another torturous yell. He sucked in a wheezing breathe, his teeth grinding together and his eyes screwing shut so hard that it strained. He bent over, crossing his free arm over his collarbone to grip his shoulder fiercely, wanting with a flaming desire to clutch the area of his stomach that seared with anguish but knowing that would only make it much worse--

And slowly, slowly, but really only it took less than a minute, the throes subsided. It had probably only been his imagination more than actual pain, after all. Benni had not thrown himself against Mats _that_ hard, and his stomach wasn’t the problem. His stomach was responding well to the treatment and stitches. It was his arm that was the problem. He’d driven bone deep in on his arm. He had splintered his own bone in two.

Mats’ desperate hold on himself loosened and his complexion gradually bronzed once more. He rested his left elbow on his thigh while his slinged arm hung uselessly and stared at the ground, his glasses askew.

Benedikt could not feel an inch of his body. For a moment, he feared that his consciousness had ditched his body completely and was floating around the room somewhere. But he quickly realized how ridiculous his hypothesis was when Mats Hummels was still right here in front of him, in plain sight, and that he was still seated in the armchair.

“You-- you dug out your bone?” Benedikt whispered fearfully after several moments of nothingness. The outside world did not exist. Even the clock could no longer be heard. The faint buzz of the fluorescent lighting was absent, no longer relevant.

“No, it’s still there, I just damaged it. And I cut my stomach too, but my stomach is okay, I had stitches and a wrap. It’s just my arm that’ll need a cast for a while,” Mats relayed, emotionlessly, almost as if he’d rehearsed the words. He pressed his lips together.

“I’m so sorry, Mats…”

“It wasn’t your fault. None of this was your fault. I’m the one who should be sorry for doing this to you.” Mats’ throat caught between his words and he allowed his eyes to close again, but this time fragiley. He tried to gulp thickly and found he was unable to, his Adam’s apple trembling against his neck.

If he stayed still, absolutely still, and didn’t utter a single word again, then maybe he could get away with this.

“I think this program you’re going to will be good for you. So you’ll be seeing a doctor there? Like a psychologist? And there’ll be other kids too? Maybe that’s better than just going to see a doctor by yourself because you’ll know you’re not the only who...who’s been through things…” Benedikt tremulously attempted to reassure Mats.

Mats didn’t know a lot yet about the program he was going to. But even if he did, he wouldn’t be able to tell Benni because he had vowed himself to absolute stillness and silence right now.

“Are you glad you’re going? Was it your parents’ idea?”

_Yes. No. I don’t know. Someone recommended me to it and they thought it was a brilliant idea, but I haven’t been yet so I don’t know. I’ll probably hate it._

“Do you not want to talk to me right now? I can leave.” He sounded hurt. Worried.

_No, Benni. Don’t leave._

And even though Mats was the stillest and most silent that any human being could possibly commit him or herself to be, he felt a cramping lump rise up into the back of his throat nonetheless.

“You’re allowed to cry, you know. If you want to. You can even cry in front of me.”

Mats really didn’t want to break his treaty of absolute stillness and silence, but he allowed himself the tiniest shake of the head. Just to let Benni know what his intentions were.

Inspired by the sign of life from the boy in front of him, Benedikt’s voice grew both more confident and softer. “I cried in front of you, so it’s only fair that you’re allowed to cry in front of me. It won’t make me think any less of you. And besides, I already know that you’ve cried before. On Saturday, when you were telling me about your brother. You were crying, Mats, that’s why you made me leave. You don’t have to pretend that you didn’t.”

Maybe one word would be okay to speak. Just one tiny word.

“Okay.”

“So are you going to cry?”

“No.”

“If you need to I think you should.”

“Okay.”

“So you’re going to cry?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. Do you want me to come sit with you?”

Mats nodded, releasing his vow of stillness and silence completely. And then he felt Benedikt sitting next to him, closing the precautionary space from earlier. He felt Benni dressing him in his rich arms and enveloping him in his warmth. When he was sure that Benni had really meant what he said, he allowed himself to close his eyes just a little tighter, just enough pressure to squeeze a single salty tear out of the corner of his eye and he felt it make a fast trail down his cheek and to his chin, where it fell off and then Mats couldn’t track it any more. The only evidence it had ever been there was the hot, sticky path it left behind. And then there was another one, but this got caught by his nose and it stayed there.

He wanted to be closer to Benni, but this was the closest that they could possibly get. If they were any closer, they’d have to be inside one another. He could feel Benni’s breath heating his cheek in the dry spots, but it felt cold on the sparse wet spots because he vaguely recalled learning in chemistry that water has a high specific heat…And the side of him that lacked the pressing warmth of Benni’s body felt like the iciest place on the planet.

The next tear that leaked out of his eye didn’t get far because it got trapped in the rim of his glasses. So did the next one. The one after that, however, found the same path as the first one, only down the other cheek and instead of falling into oblivion, it landed on the back of his hand…

And after that, he lost track because there were too many to keep track of. And all the while, Benni held him like he was afraid he might accidentally let go. Benni didn’t even brush his tears away or shush him. Benni was letting Mats have his moment unconditionally, and for that Mats was truly grateful.


	28. Pain Again

Mats wasn’t sure how long it went on for that way, and at one point the knot in his throat slipped completely loose and the silent tears trickling from his eyes gave way to full-out sobs and quaking shoulders, dripping off the tip of his nose and streaming into his mouth so he could taste the tang. But all Benni did was hold him tighter, letting him have this moment and pull him flush against his well-muscled chest so if he had had the strength to move to Benni’s lap, he could have done so. But he didn’t because he was far too drained -- if Benni wasn’t supporting him, he would’ve had to lie down.

And finally, with a great pathetic sniffle, Mats squeezed his eyes shut one final time to press out any remaining moisture, then he opened them again to reveal Benni’s tender expression inches away from his own face, his profoundly delicate hazel eyes, the corners of his lips down turned in the slightest. Mats studied the freckles that decorated his nose and followed them as they scattered away onto his cheeks, noticeably fading but still prominent enough to highlight the hollowed angles that rippled across his cheeks. Mats had never noticed those angles before, not on Benni, nor had he seen them on anyone else. He’d never seen anyone who had cheeks like Benni’s. He thought they were beautiful. He thought that Benni was beautiful, with features that were nearly opposite of his own. A rounder face, more boyish as opposed to Mats’ heavy, square jaw. Mats had thick, dark brows and lashes that contrasted greatly with Benni’s fine, fair ones. His skin and his eyes were both heavier in tone and much plainer, giving him a perfectly good reason to be fascinated with the resplendent speckles of gold in Benni’s eyes that brightened even more when the blond broke into a rare smile. His own nose was sharper in comparison to Benni’s curved one, and though his lips were slightly fuller, Benni’s were tinted with a honey-pink hue while Mats’ own camouflaged with his skin.

Right now, Mats was sure that his eyes were bloodshot and puffy and his lips and cheeks and chin smeared with moisture, but he could hardly be embarrassed about that in the moment. Mats noticed that Benni’s upper lip and the skin around the end of his nose was chapped and raw, and his heartstrings tugged at his already frail chest with this observation -- Benni must’ve still been sick, and all Mats had done was gone and selfishly added to the other boy’s list of things causing him pain.

“What happened to your lip, cutie?” Mats asked as casually as he could considering the weakness that still plagued his voice, referring to the cracked, parched state of Benni’s lips. He longed to run his fingers across those lips and quench them, but he resisted and instead found his good hand toying with Benni’s chiseled shoulder blade. He could feel the shivers running down Benni’s blades even underneath the soft t-shirt he wore.

“Too many--” Benedikt’s words fell abruptly, and as if to answer his question, he turned and let out a wicked sneeze for what felt like the thousandth time in the past week. Mats felt Benni’s shoulder blades shifting abruptly and he didn’t even bother to let go of Mats’ hips, which resulted in a strange sort of convulsion from Benedikt’s hands that caused Mats’ eyes to practically pop out of their sockets.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Benedikt grumbled, wondering if/hoping that Mats still thought he was cute after _that_.

Mats snorted, his mood instantly improving.

“Bless me,” Benedikt muttered meekly.

“You nasty slob. Cover your mouth when you sneeze,” Mats scoffed, and he was rewarded with Benni snatching his hands away and huffing dramatically.

“No, come back here,” Mats whined, finding Benni’s wrists and tugging them back to his lap. “Bless your pretty little soul, you angel. There, happy?”

Benni rolled his eyes, his bottom lip jutting out, but with something of a truth amidst Mats’ sarcasm, he seemed to forgive Mats’ impoliteness and snaked his wrists free so he could hold Mats again. Despite Mats’ amusement at Benedikt’s brief misfortune, he was still quite shaken and nothing could quite knock the fruitlessness off his expression.

Whilst Benni trailed one hand lightly up Mats’ spine to rest on his still slightly twitching shoulder, he lifted the other one to slide Mats’ glasses off his face and place them on the mattress so he could tip away a bead of moisture that had got trapped between Mats’ lashes. “Can I ask why you’re wearing glasses?”

Mats rubbed his eyes. “I’m supposed to wear them all the time but I don’t.”

“Naughty boy,” Benedikt grinned like a kitten, causing Mats to release a noise that might’ve been a feeble attempt at a real laugh, but it felt strangely foreign so he couldn’t be sure. “You need to wear your glasses.”

And with that, Benedikt plucked said accessory from besides them and slipped them back onto Mats’ face, poking his ears with the tips of the temples multiple times before he finally positioned them properly, drawing some catty protests from Mats. The latter immediately yanked them back off and proceeded to indulge Benedikt in the same punishment that he’d been subjected to by deliberately poking the blond’s ears before he gave the accessory one final, theatrical adjustment against Benedikt’s nose.

Mats smiled with sheepish satisfaction, the tears and pain from only minutes ago long past. “You know, you look _much_ cuter in those things than I do. You look like a little mouse...”

Benedikt scowled dramatically, leaning away from Mats to cross his arms. But he couldn’t deny that he liked it.

“Especially with that pout on your face, not to mention your killer hat hair. I have got to get a picture of this...”

“Oh, no, don’t you dare--”

But Mats had already conjured his phone up from somewhere and pressed his cheek against Benedikt’s, cheesing like a model, and he held out his phone and snapped a picture of the two of them.

“Mats!” Benedikt scolded, trying to take the pesky device away from Mats’ devilish hands so he could delete the picture. But Mats simply chortled and held it out of his reach with the picture displayed across the screen.

It was the worst and best photo that Benedikt had ever seen. Mats looked like the happiest boy on the planet, flashing a gigantic grin with his eyebrows halfway up his forehead and the corners of his eyes twinkling. If it weren’t for the slight redness to his eyes, then there would have been no way to tell that Mats had been crying. Somehow, he’d caught Benedikt when his eyes were crossed, and with how unexpectedly he had forced their heads next to each other, Benedikt’s was tilted back enough to see directly up his nose --

“Mats, why didn’t you tell me I had something up my nose? That’s so gross!” Benedikt moaned in disbelief, forgetting any intentions to delete the picture with this newfound, horrific discovery. How long had he been walking around like that? He hadn’t had to blow his nose since right after lunch, and that was hours ago… _Fuck_.

“You have a booger in your nose?!” Mats laughed.

“Apparent-ly,” Benedikt grumped, shooting daggers at Mats.

“Here, let me get it--”

“Oh my god, stop it--”

“ _Stay still!_ ”

“ _Mats!_ You are so disgusting!”

But Mats won their mini scuffle and Benedikt emitted an indescribable noise, combining his frustration that he had actually walked around for half the day with a horrendously conspicuous booger up his nose _and_ his disbelief that Mats Hummels had the nerve and the courage to roughly shoot his finger right up Benedikt’s nostril and dig it out.

But that’s exactly what Mats Hummels did.

Benedikt rubbed his lips together and pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to rid himself of the stinging sensation Mats’ finger had left behind.

And right when Benedikt thought it couldn’t get any worse, a demonic smirk slowly snaked its way across Mats’ lips as his eyes lit up with mischief. Benedikt had precisely half a second to prepare himself for the next thing that found its way through Mats’ big mouth.

“Should I eat it?”

“NO!” Benedikt panicked. What. The. _Fuck_.

Mats opened his mouth and lifted his arm provocatively (his uninjured one, the same one he’d just utilized to invade Benedikt’s privacy) and that was enough for Benedikt to regain some composure and slap him across the face hard enough for the smacking sound to echo across the room. Mats pretended to be deeply offended and Benedikt shot him a ‘really, Mats, I’m glad you’re feeling better but you’re taking this too far’ look.

And then Mats burst into peels of hysterical laughter. But it sounded hollow as well. Maniacal. It scared Benedikt.

What the hell was going on?

His eyes stung and needled a dull throbbing in his head, his vision was fogged and blurry, and it was only then that he realized that he was still wearing Mats’ glasses. Not only were his eyes not accustomed to them, but the lenses were clouded with the evidence of Mats’ breakdown and Benedikt finally regained some sense. He removed the glasses and set them aside.

Mats hadn’t been in the right state of mind when he ran away and he still wasn’t. He transformed from a sad, vulnerable creature to a psycho lunatic in less than a minute. That was hardly normal. The physical wounds he’d inflicted on himself may very well be in the process of healing, but his psychological therapy hadn’t even begun yet. Not only that, but Mats had also been cooped up in the hospital for days on end with nothing to do and having hardly any company in addition to having received bouts of foreign substances for various purposes.

“Benni, watch!” Mats giggled, sounding very far off indeed. His eyes looked funny, like he wasn’t really seeing anything that was in front of him but was conjuring up his own images instead --

“Go to the bathroom and wash your hands right now or I’m leaving,” Benedikt instructed as sternly as he could manage through his fear.

“You’re no fun!” Mats jeered.

_Why wasn’t anyone coming to check on him when he needed it the most?_

“Mats.”

To Benedikt’s horror, Mats responded by covering his ears with his hands, screwing his eyes shut and singing: “La la la la la! I can’t hear you!”

“ _Mats!_ Uncover your ears and look at me right now!” he yelled, feeling panic rushing through him and he prayed a nurse would choose this moment to enter with an early dinner for Mats or something.

And before he could even consider things getting any worse, Mats was crying again. Bawling. Loudly. Loudly enough that anyone on the opposite end of the hallway would be able to hear. But there were no real tears; it was dry.

“No...don’t leave me...it’s not fair...you said...you promised! YOU PROMISED! YOU’RE SO MEAN TO ME!” Mats cried hysterically, thrashing his good arm around so erratically that Benedikt was genuinely afraid he would injure himself or damage the wounds he already sported.

Fighting a strong urge to break down in tears himself, Benedikt jumped forward to grab ahold of the wrecked boy in front of him, but Mats predicted him and leapt off the bed so Benedikt had to lurch to secure his arms around Mats’ restless torso and drag him onto his lap.

“Shhhh…” he soothed to no avail; Mats was simply frantic, exerting all his strength into escaping but he was no match for Benedikt in his current state of mind.

“What did I promise?” he pleaded, hoping to distract Mats into holding a somewhat sensible conversation until he could figure out how to get help. There had to be a call button here somewhere, but he had no time to look for it… Keeping one arm firmly belted around Mats’ waist, he lifted the other one to gently stroke Mats’ thick, silky hair which was also just a bit more oily than usual, lacing his hands through it and massaging Mats’ scalp with the tips of his fingers. This seemed to calm Mats, if only in the slightest. It was a wonder, really, how the other boy could fit into Benedikt’s lap, though he did seem to have withered away into just a wisp of a thing.

Benedikt rocked back and forth, his voice mellowing to that honeyed tone that Mats loved so much. “What did I promise you, pumpkin?”

And that’s when Benedikt realized he had absolutely no idea what he was doing. He didn’t realize what he’d just called Mats before it was too late to swallow it back down. He hadn’t even meant it in a joking sense; there was no way he could’ve forced himself to be non-serious right now. But somehow it only felt right, and Mats relaxed even more.

“You...you promised you wouldn’t le-leave me. You p-promised you would help…” Mats shuddered.

Benedikt couldn’t recall making such a verbal promise. But even if he hadn’t, he knew that sometime in the past week he had made a mental pact with himself that he would help this boy no matter what it took. Even if Mats didn’t know about that in particular, he still somehow knew.

“I’m not going to leave you,” Benedikt promised, brushing back the stray, short hairs that were skirting across Mats’ dry forehead. “I’m here to stay with you because I care about you, okay?”

Mats nodded in a frenzy, the sheer terror still ghosting his expression but he had now mostly settled down. “I’m sorry that I hurt you...I’m so sorry, Benni,” he said coarsely.

“It’s okay. You’re going through a lot right now, I understand that. I’m not mad at you anymore. I just want you to get better,” Benedikt said vehemently.

“I’m scared,” Mats whimpered, sounding more raw and vulnerable than Benedikt had ever heard him before. His brows were still knitted in utter fear and he was flicking his bottom lip back and forth compulsively. “I don’t know what’s happening to me…”

Benedikt had to close his eyes, his hold on Mats slackening.

He didn’t know either. He didn’t know what was happening to Mats or what was going to happen to him at the program. He had no answer.

The next thing he knew, Mats had tucked his head into the crook of Benedikt’s neck and Benedikt could feel everything at once, the sticky mess the tears had left on his cheeks, the velvety hair tickling his own skin, the weight of Mats’ body as he curled up into him, and the heat of everything Mats had been through. Benedikt moved his arms to wrap them around Mats’ back, holding him safely against his chest so he could fall back onto the mattress where Mats still lay on top of him, pressing him into the cold whiteness of the bed. Benedikt felt so much pressure from both the mass of Mats on his diaphragm and the hard mattress fighting back below him that his breathing was cut shallow, but he didn’t care. And for the first time, he noticed the smell of someone who hadn’t bathed in days, who hadn’t had the easiest time digesting anything and who had been doused in medicine and fiddled with endlessly, but he didn’t care about that either.

But then was wheezing, fighting for breath and it sounded a lot worse than it really was because there was still some remainder of his cold that hadn’t loosened yet trapped in his lungs. Mats rolled off of him, hovering above him with a look of deep concern embedded in his features, his eyes shiny again and seeing and believing reality. Benedikt blinked feebly while his lungs thanked him infinitely for unblocking their passage.

“You were squashing me a bit,” he panted.

Mats lowered himself next to Benedikt, cocooning himself into the blond’s side and burying only his head into Benedikt’s chest to alleviate some of the weight. “This is better?”

“Yeah,” Benedikt breathed. He allowed Mats to sink into him once more, to relax under the shelter of his arms and body and he found his hands digging underneath Mats’ shirt to find not his hot, hard skin, but the coarse texture of a wrap instead…

It was hard to believe that Mats would do this to himself, but it still made so much sense.

“Doesn’t this hurt?” Benedikt whispered.

“Only when I’m not careful when I move around a lot and forget that I’m injured,” Mats mumbled into Benedikt’s chest.

_Like just now._

But before Benedikt could begin fussing over him, Mats had turned the subject of the conversation around. “You passed out today, Benni, and why?”

He sounded melancholy, ashamed. As if he knew it had somehow been linked to him.

“I got dizzy,” Benedikt explained truthfully. “I was giving a -- our...our presentation and I don’t know what happened, I just got really dizzy. I feel fine now, though.” He knew the tag at the end was not really what Mats was concerned about, but he’d been so used to insisting everyone that he felt fine after today that it only felt natural.

“You passed out because you couldn’t handle that presentation by yourself after everything that’s happened between us because of it.” A statement.

“No,” Benedikt returned quickly. “I’ve had a cold, it was probably because of that…”

“Bullshit. Colds don’t make people _faint_.”

And Benedikt felt a surge of frustration. He let his heavy arms fall back to his sides away from Mats. “Okay, Mats, how’s this, it was _your_ fault even though you weren’t even there and had nothing to do with the fact that I’d just spent three days lying in bed with the worst fucking cough I’ve ever had in my life. Better?”

“Maybe it was my fault that you got a cough in the first place!” Mats fired back, shooting upwards off of Benedikt so forcefully that it made him yelp from the protest in his stomach and he staggered slightly from the weight in his casted arm.

Benedikt folded his hands on top of his head, rubbing his forearms in exasperation and rolled his eyes. “Uh-huh. Okay.”

Mats shook his head incredulously as he remembered waking up just one week ago to an overheated Benedikt tangled up in his limbs. But before Benedikt had a chance to refute further, Mats felt a sudden urge to go to the bathroom and he rushed off, slamming the bathroom door behind him and tipping the fan on as a futile attempt to drown out any unpleasant noises before he crumpled over the toilet.

Benedikt swore and swung himself off the bed, following the path that Mats had just made. He knocked on the door.

“What are you doing?!” Mats shrieked.

“Checking on you because you just sprinted off and locked yourself in here,” Benedikt explained as if this should be obvious. “I’m going to come in.”

“No, Benni, don’t!” Mats practically cried. He couldn’t allow Benedikt to come in here and witness just how repulsive he could be, even if he so desperately wanted Benedikt’s comfort because something felt wrong... “What is wrong with you?! Leave people alone when they’re on the toilet.”

“Mats, seriously. Are you okay? Like, actually, though.”

“Ye -- no! I’m going to die, I think I’m dying, help me!” Mats burst out in complete dismay.

The first thing that should’ve come to Benedikt’s mind was fetching a nurse, he was at a fucking hospital for god’s sake but it was their job to be checking in on Mats anyway, they should be due to check on him at any minute since it had been quite awhile...so forgetting that he lacked any sort of professional medical skills or knowledge, he thrust the door open and flew in to kneel in front of Mats, immediately pulling the other boy’s ice cold left hand into both his own, which was a weird sensation seeing as Mats’ forehead was glossy with sweat…

“I--can’t--” Mats choked out.

“You can’t poop,” Benedikt finished for him dully.

“But I feel like I am!” Mats gushed, his expression wild and unearthly. “What if I already did?!”

Benedikt squeezed his uncasted hand to calm him, which only resulted in Mats’ chalky face contorting in discomfort as his head fell back on his neck.

“Okay,” Benedikt asserted as confidently as he could even though he was freaking out just as badly as Mats was on the inside. “You wait right here and I’ll go get someone…”

“It’s coming out!”

“What?”

“It’s coming out but it’s not stopping!”

And Benedikt realized with a paralyzing jolt that Mats was not constipated -- he was simply hallucinating. He thought that he felt the need to use the toilet and he thought he was going, but he wasn’t. He wasn’t, as far as Benedikt could tell…

Suddenly, Benedikt was angry. Why were they making him wait to get the help he needed? Why were they subjecting him to this torture and making him wait until Monday, leaving him by himself for god’s sake? Why was Benedikt the only person who seemed to understand the true pain that this boy was suffering through?

Maybe he _was_ the only one who truly understood…

And then it was all too much. He couldn’t handle it anymore. He needed to find someone who could stay with Mats and then get the hell out of here.

“I’m going to go get someone and then I have to go, okay?” he told Mats in a shaky voice as he straightened up. “When you feel better I want you to text me. Promise?”

Mats nodded vigorously. “But why do you have to go?”

“Because...because it’s beyond my ability to help you right now. You’re really sick and you’re going to get help, but I can’t be the person who helps you get better. I’ll be there to support you, but you have to get better before I can see you again. It’s what’s best for both of us.”

The words smoldered in his throat before they left, but Benedikt knew that this was necessary. He leaned forward, not even knowing what he was doing until he was pressing a kiss to Mats’ lips but all he could notice was how it felt like his lips were both freezing solid and burning up at the same time, how salty and glutinous they were. Mats’ hand was trembling in his own and Benedikt dropped it, daring himself a look at Mats’ broken, crushed expression before he turned on his heel.

He tried to blink the image away but he couldn’t. It was stuck there, captivating his every sense and darkening everything else.

“Benni, please..”

And he wasn’t sure whether that fragmented voice had been that of the real Mats or the one in Benedikt’s head, but he had already left the room before he could respond, snagging his beanie on the way out and slapping it imperfectly back on, and he rushed through the monotonous hallways to the elevator. He would stop at the desk on his way out and tell them that Mats was in worse condition than they thought he was and maybe, if someone got there in time, they would figure out what he meant. But if not, only one more day in the hospital until Mats could go home and then he would start his program on Monday. For now, it was just a battle against time.

_I can’t believe I left him there by himself…_

But there was nothing that he could’ve done. Mats couldn’t rely on him like that, it was unhealthy. Mats needed to start getting better before they dug themselves in any deeper.

Benedikt didn’t walk out the doors into the open air until he was sure that Mats was being seen to. Once he was relieved, he was only able to let a few rays of sunshine soak his skin and take one or two breaths of the clean, humid air that was so unlike that of the hospital’s before he discovered that his phone had died and, therefore, he had no way of contacting anyone for a ride home, let alone Mats.

But he spotted a familiar car in the parking lot and confirmed that it was his mom’s after reviewing the license plate.

He climbed into the passenger side wordlessly and pulled the door shut behind him. His mom was listening to the news and checking her email on her phone.

“Done?” she greeted him pompously without looking away from her phone.

“Yes. Did you wait here the whole time?”

“I was planning on going to the library, but you weren’t gone for too long.” Mrs. Höwedes then set her phone in the console and twisted the car key to ignition.

Benedikt wanted to ask how long he’d been gone for -- it seemed like ages -- but he didn’t. Instead, he leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes, trying to let everything leak out of his brain as they rode away from the hospital. The smooth ride did mitigate the rogue state of Benedikt’s train of thought, the news rumbling on in the background and reminding him that the world would carry on…

And then the ride ended far too early to mean that they had arrived home. He didn’t open his eyes, but he felt the car slowing down and rolling over a bump into what he assumed was a parking lot because he felt the car swinging around, making slight adjustments and then coming to a halt, the news and the engine dying.

Benedikt opened his eyes, blinking in the rough late afternoon sunlight. They were not home. They were at a shopping center.

“Can you take me home?” Benedikt whined. He was really not in the mood to be tagging along while his mom ran errands and went to the bank and bought groceries.

“I was going to take you to get Pho,” his mom replied, slightly disappointed by Benedikt’s reaction.

Benedikt considered the delicious Vietnamese soup for a second. He was certainly very hungry; he had not eaten a real meal since lunch today, and the hot, salty broth would probably help rid his body of whatever lingered from his cold. But why was his mom taking him out to eat? What sort of revelation had taken place?

Benedikt wasn’t sure if he was ready for it. It simply wasn’t fair that he would be out enjoying soup at a restaurant while Mats was confined to a small, unfriendly hospital room, unable to escape from the hauntings of his own uncouth mind. And especially after Benedikt had just left him there.

“I don’t want to go out to eat,” Benedikt revealed quietly, fiddling with his watch. 4:33.

“Are you sure?” she replied, sounding very hurt indeed.

“Yu-huh. Let’s go home,” he confirmed flatly.

So Mrs. Höwedes keyed the ignition once more and pulled out of the parking space, trying to keep it together. She tried not to take it personally, knowing how Benedikt must’ve been feeling. But still, it hurt to be rejected by your own son. No matter how many times it happened, it hurt no less than it had the first time. And in a way, it hurt a little more because every rejection came with the maiming of the hope you held for a new outcome.

It took everything Benedikt had to prevent himself from changing his mind and demanding his mom to turn the car around. It would be so easy, yet so hard. He was far too stubborn. He couldn’t allow himself to be so wishy-washy.

Benedikt didn’t realize how exhausted he was until he had to stifle several yawns in a row. All the energy and adrenaline he’d regained after passing out today had been scraped clean to the core, devoted all to Mats.

Mrs. Höwedes wanted to talk to Benedikt. She wanted to ask how the visit went, and then she wanted to find out why he had passed out today. But she knew that if Benedikt didn’t want to get Pho with her, then he probably wasn’t in the mood for discussing anything either.

But she still had to ask. She was his mother, and his distress was tangible in the air.

“How was visiting your friend?”

“His name is Mats,” said Benedikt irritably. “You can call him by his name.”

Mrs. Höwedes swallowed. “How was visiting Mats?” she corrected herself.

“Awful.”

There was an electrifying silence following Benedikt’s response. A typical Benedikt answer would have been ‘It was good’ or ‘It was fine’ and then the conversation would end there.

“What happened, honey?” Mrs. Höwedes asked after a while.

“Don’t call me that, I’m sixteen years old,” snapped Benedikt.

Mrs. Höwedes’ heart sunk an inch or two. “Do you want to tell me about it?”

“Not really.”

“Okay,” Mrs. Höwedes sighed. “I’m sorry it didn’t go well. Is he doing okay, at least?”

“No mom, he isn’t. He mutilated himself when he ran away and they stitched him up all nicely and left it at that. He’s not starting his therapy till Monday and he’s having hallucinations. Bad ones,” Benedikt said all in a great rush, watching the houses and trees whirling by as they rode past. They were nearly home now. He longed to get out. He felt claustrophobic and trapped in here with his mother and her perfume. It made his nostrils sting even more in combination with the tiny scratch Mats seemed to have left behind. He slid the latch on the glove compartment and found a tissue, blowing his nose loudly into it. When he was finished, he dropped the dirtied tissue next to his banana peel from earlier and rolled the window all the way down, which somehow made him start sneezing. He couldn’t stop and he lost count of how many times he sneezed after three because it hurt his chest too much, his eyes watering in pain. _Make it stop._ It wouldn’t stop until he had practically orgasmed from all the exertion, rolled the window back up and blew the shit out of his sad nose again.

There were specks of blood on the tissue as well as on the back of his wrist where he’d covered. He quickly wiped it off before his mom could notice.

“My goodness,” his mom said. “Bless you, bless you.”

Benedikt wanted to scream. He had to sink his teeth into his lip and massage his sore ribs to keep from doing so.

And then, only because nothing in this world was fair, he sneezed once more.

This was simply unbelievable. It was all Mats’ fault. Every time he saw Mats, every time he _thought_ about Mats, he crumpled, quite literally. He was sick of it. He was tired of his body giving up on him every time he seemed to be getting better. It was a curse.

“Thanks,” he mumbled after a long, painful while throughout which he struggled to catch his breath again.

“The doctors probably gave him some pretty strong painkillers and it’s a temporary side effect. He’s in good hands, you don’t need to worry about him, Benedikt,” Mrs. Höwedes said to continue their previous conversation.

“No. It wasn’t the drugs. I know that because it’s happened before when I was with him, and I don’t even know about all the times it’s happened when I haven’t been there. And I do need to worry about him because he is my friend,” Benedikt asserted, rubbing his nose on his sleeve with care. “Stop trying to downplay everything. You don’t know what happened when I was in there with him.”

“You’re not telling me what happened, Benedikt. I have no idea what happened except for that he ran away and got himself hurt.” Mrs. Höwedes pulled up into their driveway and stalled the engine.

“‘Got himself hurt’? What is _that_ supposed to mean?! You do realize that he could’ve killed himself, right?” Benedikt pushed the door open rather forcefully so it bounced back and he had to use his foot to prop it open again. “I didn’t even want to talk about this with you but you made me! And this is why, because you’re pretending that everything is okay when it fucking isn’t!” he shot.

“Do not use that kind of language,” Mrs. Höwedes warned, sounding far more exasperated than assertive. Sounding like she’d wanted to address something else her son had revealed, but not knowing the right thing to say so she just went with something else she knew that parents were supposed to say even though she felt as if Benedikt had every reason to swear right now.

“I don’t care! I’m going inside, just leave me alone!” Benedikt swung his legs over onto the pavement and fumed off towards the front door, not even caring that his mom was following close behind, fully aware that the conversation had ended. Ended badly, as it usually always did between the two of them.

Why wasn’t anyone taking this seriously?

All Benedikt could hope for was that Monday would come, and come fast.


	29. Don't Throw Your Hands Up

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mats comes home from the hospital and starts his new program.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The [] represents the monkey emoji.

Benedikt’s Friday was much better than his Thursday. The only mildly humiliating thing that happened was that he had a timed essay in English and he just happened to be that guy who was sniffling and clearing his throat every 10 seconds, setting himself up for some very annoyed glares from classmates who were trying to focus and eventually his teacher came by and personally plopped a box of tissues on his desk with a ‘please use these, you poor child’ look. But by Monday, it seemed as if he had finally fully recovered from the flu after gargling more than his fair share of saltwater; he no longer needed to keep a pack of tissues on him, was no longer pestered with constant coughing and sneezing and it felt like the chains cutting into his lungs had been stripped away. He could breathe again.

When he walked into chemistry on Friday, Mr. Löw surprised him by presenting him with his rubric and handing back his poster. He’d completely forgotten about it; it was now bent at an angle and looking rather battered. When Mr. Löw was not looking, he crumpled it up rather noisily and dropped it in the recycling with a splitting wave of relief and a burst of fresh air.

The final chains had been cut.

Then he looked at the rubric he’d been given. He had received a 80% but had earned only 12 out of 20 points in the ‘creativity’ category. The entire ‘presentation’ category worth 30 points had a line drawn through it, so his grade was only out of 60 points instead of 100 like the rest of the class. The other third category, ‘content’, he had done fine in with 36 out of 40 points, but the biggest eye catcher on the rubric was that the final category worth 10 points had been discluded as well: ‘collaboration’. Mats’ name had been left off the rubric.

Benedikt thought it was ironic how this whole thing had happened simply because of this project, yet Mats never ended up pulling through.

After school, he went for a run and it was liberating. It had been nearly a week since his last run, and that hadn’t counted as a real run since he’d been held back by Mats. The air breezed past his skin as he took long strides and filled his lungs, expanding them and pumping showers of life through his whole body and lightening the throbs in his head. He arrived back home after nearly nine miles with dehydrated patches of pink on his cheeks, breathing hard but feeling alive. He rolled his sleeves up to his shoulders, pushed away the sweaty hair plastered to his forehead with the back of his hand and downed two glasses of ice water without so much as a break.

Although the space from Mats was necessary, he was missing the goofy yet tormented dark haired boy quite a bit. They texted periodically throughout the day and Mats updated him on what was going on with his therapy. He really wanted to call Mats and hear his voice, see for himself that Mats was okay, but that would be pushing the whole ‘I need space’ thing just a little bit.

So Benedikt decided that one would week do it. He would allow himself to see Mats Hummels again after at least one week had gone by.

The following week proved to be the hardest week to wait of his whole life.

\-----

“MATSI!”

The second Mats stepped through the front door on Friday evening, Kira came romping over to him. She knew he’d be coming home today, and she had been waiting for him all afternoon. She had missed him a lot; she hadn’t seen him since they went to the One D concert with Benni. Her babysitter Natalie had even helped her bake brownies and use yellow and purple frosting to write ‘Welcome home, Mats’ across the square before it was cut up. Natalie had written the ‘welcome home’ part neatly in yellow, but she had let Kira write Mats’ name in purple with a little bit of help, so the ‘Mats’ part was exponentially sloppier than the rest of it with random dollops of purple frosting sprinkled across the brownie square.

Mats squatted down to allow his sister to crash against him -- she seemed to have forgotten the warning from her mom to “remember to be gentle, Kira, because Matsi is hurt” -- and Mats used his good arm to embrace her. He didn’t even mind the dull throbbing waves that crashed through his stomach at the impact. The love and innocence that radiated from his little sister was all worth it.

“Matsi, you’re home!” she cried, overjoyed.

“I’m home, little bee,” Mats said, smiling so enormously through her messy, tangled hair that it hurt his cheeks.

At this point, Silver came trotting over as well and nosed her way between the two of them, her tail wagging a hundred miles a minute and whacking everything within its radius with a loud _thump!_. Silver had missed Mats enormously, too. She’d been glum and solemn and wary with his absence, ignoring her breakfast kibble and not enjoying her walks as much as she usually did. Mats was her favorite; she had bonded with him the instant they brought her home from the rescue, and she never perked up until she was sure that he was safe and sound.

“I made brownies for you,” Kira stated triumphantly, wiggling away from the ecstatic, slobbery husky and her mangled brother to gallop into the kitchen. “Come on!”

Rubbing his stomach and grimacing slightly, Mats heaved himself up and followed Kira. Really, all he wanted to do right now was to take a bath, seeing as he hadn’t had a proper shower since before the concert and he had basically been through hell and back, not to mention vomited multiple times and shat himself. He felt morbidly disgusting, and he was certain that he reeked of it, too. But before he could do that, he felt compelled to celebrate with brownies and his doting family in the kitchen.

His parents paid and thanked Natalie, a nice looking blond girl who was too polite to admit that Kira was the most exhausting little six year old she had ever met. Kira’s idea of a good time was not coloring and painting nails or even watching cartoons, but running around endlessly and jumping on the trampoline until she had too many cramps to keep jumping and riding her scooter up and down the street until she was too hungry to continue. This was when Natalie had suggested that they make brownies for Mats’ return, and Kira had happily complied, licking the batter off her fingers as they went and smearing it all over her face and One Direction t-shirt so it was a wonder that there was any left to put in the oven.

“Silver, don’t eat --” There was a loud crashing sound and the unmistakable noise of a dish clattering to the ground. “OW! MOMMY! SILVER TRIPPED ME! _NO, SILVER, STOP!_ ”

 _Please don’t let the husky have eaten the brownies,_ Mats prayed for Kira’s sake more than his own.

He rushed into the kitchen to find Kira on her stomach, her soiled shirt riding up her small torso and Silver happily plopped down next to her, her snout immersed in a mixing bowl. The mixing bowl, thank the lord, not the plate of freshly baked brownies with melted chocolate chips. He snatched the bowl away from Silver and dropped it in the sink, saying “bad girl” rather half heartedly because Silver already looked pretty guilty. She clambered out of the kitchen with her head down, knowing she’d done something bad.

Mats then helped his sister up, who looked about as pissed off as a six year old could get. “Silver knocked me over and tried to eat your brownies!”

“She’s a bad girl,” Mats said as he fixed Kira’s shirt and tucked her untameable hair behind her ears.

At this point, Mr. and Mrs. Hummels wandered into the kitchen, having just said goodbye to Natalie. “Everything’s okay in here, kiddos?” Mr. Hummels wanted to know.

“Everything’s dandy,” Mats said.

Kira giggled.

Mrs. Hummels poured milk for everyone while Mr. Hummels dolled out the brownies on to four separate plates, then after Kira had convinced Mats to play her second favorite musical artist Meghan Trainor through his phone while they ate, they settled down at the table and enjoyed the delicious chocolatey treat. Kira chomped away at hers, dunking it in copious amounts of milk and dripping it all over the table and down her chin and onto her shirt. Mr. and Mrs. Hummels ate politely while Mats nibbled at his own brownie. And the whole time, Kira could not draw her eyes away from Mats’ right arm. The more she studied it, the slower and less enthusiastic her chomping became and the sadder and bigger her eyes grew.

“Matsi?”

“Mhm?”

“Does your arm hurt a lot?” she asked.

“Nope, because I have dinosaurs on my sling and my cast is blue. See?” He held up his arm so Kira could see the bright blue cast hidden by the sling. Mats winked, and Kira’s lips melted into a tiny smile.

Matsi had dinosaurs on his sling. He was going to be okay. The dinosaurs would scare away anything that might hurt him.

\-----

On Monday morning at 7 o’clock sharp, Mats’ alarm went off.

He couldn’t remember the last time he’d woken up to the sound of his alarm blaring unpleasantly in his ear. He hadn’t been to school for over a week.

But he wasn’t going to school today. He was going to his first day at the Springfield Adolescent & Behavioral Center, in which he was enrolled in a half-day program for teens with psychological and behavioral challenges. In addition to the three-week long program, he was to see a doctor once a week for therapy until it was determined whether he needed more or less sessions.

Mats opened one eye and lifted his arm clumsily to smack his alarm off. Then he rolled over, fished out his phone from wherever it had ended up in his blankets last night, and checked for any texts.

_From: Benni[]_

_Good luck today. Let me know how it goes. I’ll be thinking about you_

_To: Benni[]_

_Thanks_

He typed in ‘I’ve missed you’ and deleted it several times in a row, debating over whether or not to send it. After a while, he decided against it because he knew that Benni wanted some space.

He just hoped this damn program would work. He wanted to get better for Benni. He wanted to show Benni the kind of person he really was.

Stretching hugely, cracking his back and accidentally hitting himself in the face with his cast because he kept forgetting he had it on, Mats sat up and yawned. He wandered into the bathroom to pee and brush his teeth and wash his face, which were all rather difficult tasks seeing as he only had one hand to use which was not even his dominant one. Then he got dressed in whatever clothes he could find. He dug up a pair of snug jeans then found a royal blue technical shirt in his clean laundry that he at first didn’t recognize. He never wore technical shirts. Why would he need to? Not to mention that he hated any color clothing that wasn’t black, white, or gray. The only reason he wore colors other than black, white, and gray was because he could hardly ever find his clothes that he liked on account of his inconsistency in putting away his laundry.

Then he remembered. It was Benni’s running shirt.

His heart pounding, not even caring that he would be walking around wearing an exercise shirt that was just a tad bit small, he slipped it over his head and pulled it over his torso, which was now wrap-free and healing nicely as long as he didn’t pick at the stitches and applied the cream he was supposed to before he went to bed every night (he’d forgotten to last night, which was his first night without the wrap, but oh well). He started sweating instantly after he put on the shirt, a wistful, prickling sweat of sorts for reasons he didn’t want to think about right now because Benni was so far away. So he found his stick of deodorant and slabbed it under his arms in hopes that the cool substance would stem the evidence of his desire at least a little.

And then, only because he’d be less likely recognized this way, he slid on his glasses. They were smeared and foggy though, so he had to take them off and wipe them clean before he put them on again. Finally for extra good measures, he tilted his head back, crossed his eyes, made a sign with two fingers and snapped a quick selfie to send to Benni.

_To: Benni[]_

_Who am I?_ **_[image attached]_ **

_From: Benni[]_

_Shut the fuck up. I swear to god if you keep making fun of me I’m breaking up with you_

A smile spread across Mats’ lips at Benni’s inability to pose a proper threat.

_To: Benni[]_

_Oooh SOMEONES cranky in the morning……….._

_From: Benni[]_

_**[image attached]** _

Benni had taken a photo of himself at the breakfast table with a bagel sat on a napkin in front of him, his middle finger held high in the air and his mouth arranged into a glare. He was still in his sweatpants and had a severe case of blond bedhead, the sleep crumbs identifiable in his eyes even through the slightly pixelated front camera quality.

Mats laughed. Then he made Benni’s picture his homescreen, keeping his lockscreen as the one they had taken together on Thursday.

\-----

Mats and his dad were in the car, Mr. Hummels at the wheel and Mats sitting stiffly in the backseat without his seatbelt on. He was scraping at the leather of the back of the seat in front of him, leaving marks with his overgrown fingernails. He knew he was acting immature and bratty, what with refusing to sit in the front next to his dad and all, but it felt good. He was mad at his parents.

 _Scra-a-a-pe._ He clawed at the expensive material like it was a chalkboard, doing his very best to aggravate his father and vandalize the leather at the same time. Mr. Hummels said nothing, just simply hummed along off-tune to the easy listening radio station. Mats had inherited his singing abilities from his father, which he was peeved about. If he had been able to sing, if he had inherited a sweet, angelic voice like his sister, he could’ve done choir all these years and gone on all those overnight trips with Benedikt. _Scra-a-a-pe._

He had bounded down the stairs this morning, off a sort of high from Benni’s texts, to discover his parents in the kitchen arguing in hushed tones about who was going to take Kira to the bus stop and who was going to drive Mats to his program. It seemed like both of them were keen on the first choice, the reasoning being that since Mats had not shown any signs of protest yet, he was certainly going to freak out once they arrived and neither of them had the energy or the soul to deal with that. Mr. Hummels, pouring coffee from the coffee pot into a large to-go mug and adding several spoonfuls of sugar, claimed that Mats was less likely to throw a tantrum around his mom because he respected her more. Mrs. Hummels shot back that that was bullshit, that when Mats didn’t want to do something he didn’t care who was around and who he put to shame. She finished slicing up a banana for Kira, pushed the pieces off the cutting board on to her plate next to her bowl of maple-apple oatmeal and brought it over to the wide-eyed little girl. Mrs. Hummels said she couldn’t believe that Mr. Hummels would put this on her when he was supposed to be the ‘man of the household’.

And Mats disagreed with both of them. How very dare they assume that he was going to stamp his feet and cry like a baby and make a big production? What if he _wanted_ to do this, what if he _wanted_ to get better for Benni? Did they ever think about that? And why was this even an argument in the first place? Why did neither of them want to take him? Didn’t they care about him, didn’t they want to see their own son get better? The favoritism towards Kira bit him like venom.

In the end, it was Mrs. Hummels who won the argument after Mr. Hummels ultimately gave in, his submissive personality pulling through. So Mrs. Hummels told Kira to eat her breakfast quickly before they missed the bus and Mr. Hummels flicked the car keys off the rack, informing Mats that it was time to go. Mats slouched his way into the car, very pissed off indeed. He’d been having a good morning until his parents had reminded him what kind of person he truly was.

_Scra-a-a-pe._

Mats was scowling so hard that it hurt the muscles in his face.

“Stop that, please, Mats,” his dad finally stated after a good twenty minutes of driving.

Mats let his left hand fall into his lap next to the blue cast. He leaned forward, resting his forehead against the cool leather and his glasses slid a couple centimeters down the bridge of his nose.

He pushed them back up.

“Are you going to have a good attitude today?” Mr. Hummels asked as he turned down the radio, keeping things light and conversational.

“Yes,” grumped Mats. He began to pick at a fingernail on his casted hand until he was able to pry an indent, which he promptly utilised to rip off the excess material at the tip of his finger. He then flicked it off onto the floor.

Mats was angry at his parents for ruining his good mood, but he was not about to spoil this for himself. He was going to go in there, ready to do whatever it took to get better for Benni. He had no idea what to expect, but he would find out soon enough. He knew he probably shouldn’t feel excited about missing weeks of school to go to therapy, but the truth was that he did.

“Your first appointment with Dr. Kalita is tonight. We wanted to put it off until later in the week so you wouldn’t be overwhelmed, but this was the only slot he had available,” his dad let him know.

“Great. Looking forward to it,” said Mats. He sounded sarcastic but really, he meant it. “Is he going to prescribe me medicine?”

“He might. He has to talk to you first and find out what’s wrong,” Mr. Hummels shrugged.

“I already know what’s wrong, my brain is fucked up and I need medicine,” Mats declared.

At this, his dad sighed, not at Mats’ use of language but at the fact that he seemed so adamant on the ease of this process. Mats thought it was going to be simple; he thought he was going to go in there, get some medicine and everything would be magically fixed. He didn’t know that it was going to be arduous at times, that he was going to get frustrated and have to talk about things that he didn’t want to talk about, do things that he didn’t want to do. He was going to have to change something and that had to come from within him. There was only so much that medicine could do.

But the thing that scared Mr. Hummels the most was that _he_ also was going to have to talk about things he didn’t want to talk about, too. Things he had been purposely avoiding for years.

But he was the one who had allowed it to get this bad. He was the one who hadn’t allowed Mats to express his feelings, who hadn’t allowed him to accept the fact that he had once had a brother and that he was now gone. Furrowing his brows, Mr. Hummels glanced at the GPS and determined that a right turn off the main boulevard was in the works. A right turn which would take them right to the center they were looking for.

“Dad.”

“Mhm.”

“Why do you favor Kira over me?” Mats didn’t only sound pissed, he sounded hurt.

“You know that I don’t,” Mr. Hummels returned, as if the question had been ridiculous.

“Yeah you do. You like her more than me because I’m not what you wanted,” Mats said roughly. _Scr-a-a-a-pe._

“You know that’s not true,” Mr. Hummels pleaded, ignoring Mats’ reasoning because he knew what his son was getting at. “Your mom and I love both of you equally. You two are the biggest blessings in our lives.”

Mats snorted. “I’m a blessing? Have you been living under a rock for the past three years? And what about Jonas?”

It was as if a bomb had been dropped in the car. It exploded silently but left all the same intrusions, opened all the same wounds and maimed all the same vulnerabilities. And at the same time that Mr. Hummels pulled into the parking lot of a large, modern-looking multipurpose institution, Mats lost all his solid determination and enthusiasm and decided that he was _not_ going to go in there. It wasn’t his fault that he was this way, why should he have to suffer all the consequences and have to go to an asylum?

Mr. Hummels held the steering wheel so hard that his sun-battered knuckles turned white, just to have something to hold on to to keep Mats’ inevitable tirade for pulling him under.

“You know what I think? I think that you wish both of us had died so you wouldn’t have to deal with this. You would’ve loved to start all over again with Kira and have a nice little happy family, but you were stuck with me and I’m just a reminder of the fucked up past. You either wanted to have both of us or neither of us, but not just one because the one that’s left is only a burden. I’m only a reminder of what _could’ve_ been,” Mats explained, and it was so casual and unembellished that it made Mr. Hummels wonder if Mats had already thought about this so much before that it was meaningless to him now. “Is that true, dad?”

And what _could’ve_ been. They could’ve had a pair of twins to raise, they could’ve continued to feel that swell of pride whenever someone asked how far apart in age the boys were and they replied with ‘twins’, to which the conversation would often continue to inquire whether the twins were identical or fraternal and they replied with ‘they haven’t been tested, but we think they are fraternal’. They should’ve had to encounter all the trials and tribulations of raising same-age siblings, decide whether they should be kept together or separated in school, deal with jealousy and unfairness, treat them equally but not the same, and encourage both of them to develop as unique individuals as well as make them feel like they were. But also remind them that they had a special bond that most other people did not so they needed to have each other’s backs and that people might get them mixed up but to take it in good humor even though it was frustrating.

And they did have to think about all those things for four years until they had other things to think about.

They hardly ever discussed anything about the other twin. It was no use to dwell on things that couldn’t come back, that couldn’t change. They were ardent on that, but the only problem was that they never gave Mats a chance to feel sad about his missing twin. They never gave him a chance to accept the fact that he’d be growing up as only one of two.

The most they had ever discussed the other twin was when Mats was examining a family photo from a summer reunion on the wall, stuffing Halloween chocolate into his mouth and frowning as he inspected himself and his brother at age three clad in identical overalls and sunglasses, sitting on the lap of their overjoyed grandfather and holding hands. The only difference between the two of them was that one of them looked content while the other looked eager to leap up and continue whatever he’d been amusing himself with before everyone in the Hummels branch of the great extended family was gathered for a photo, which by the looks of it had been rolling around in the mud. Mats was ten or eleven at the time he’d spotted the photo, and he’d come up with “Which one is me?” when his dad had walked by on his way to fill a bottle for a fussy Kira.

Mr. Hummels had stopped and rested a steady hand on his son’s shoulder. This was far before Mats had shot up in height and started getting both sweatier and moodier, so at 6’1, it wasn’t much of a stretch for Mr. Hummels to reach his son. Later, however, Mats would surpass him in height and the taller Mats grew, the less he and his father embraced each other, simply because of physics.

With his free hand, Mr. Hummels had pointed to the twin on the right, the one who wasn’t covered in mud and was just chilling. “This one is you.”

“How do you know?” Mats had asked, looking up at his father with intrigued eyes.

“I’m your dad,” Mr. Hummels had answered smartly. “And I remember that picture.” He most certainly did remember that picture. It had been one hell of nightmare to drag Jonas away from the puddle of mud on at the base of the slide he and some other kids had discovered, let alone gathering everyone else and making them sit still for two minutes.

But Mats’ question also raised a question in Mr. Hummels’ head. How _did_ he know? How was he able to tell his boys apart? Both he and his wife had always assumed that the boys were fraternal simply because they had no trouble telling them apart, but perhaps that was just their parental instincts and the boys were identical after all. Studying the picture and remembering all those years ago, Mr. Hummels began to question what he had always believed. His boys had been very much identical, depicting mirror-worthy images of each other and similar temperaments as well...Though Jonas was always the slightly rowdier one while Mats tended to go with the flow. At least before the fire had happened. That’s when things changed.

Anyway, Mr. Hummels would never find out now whether his boys were identical or not. The only clues he had where hidden within his memory.

Mr. Hummels was whipped away from his wistful memory when he heard an unfamiliar noise in the backseat. It took him a second to realize that Mats was crying because he couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen his son cry. And what he didn’t know was that Mats had not cried in years but that this was his third time crying in less than two weeks, and that he didn’t even care about humiliating himself anymore.

Mr. Hummels didn’t know what to do about it. So he didn’t do anything.

He had pulled into a parking space without even noticing, so he allowed his hands to relax from the wheel and rub his temples, listening to Mats’ pain-filled choking sobs.

“I...don’t w-want...to go…” Mats sputtered. “Please don’t...m-make me...go…”

“You’ll feel better once you’re settled in,” was all Mr. Hummels could supply, warily, defeated, sensing a battle. And then, hating himself for it, he found an unused napkin in the cupholder in his door, held it over the shoulder of his seat and said “Clean yourself up and let’s go.”

But the rough texture of the napkin was not taken out of his hand, so he let it flutter to the floor.

Aching with age and exhaustion, Mr. Hummels exited the car and wrapped around to the back seat, where he pulled open Mats’ door and wrapped his hand around Mats’ upper arm. He tugged lightly, as if that would draw Mats away from the car. “We need to go, Mats. I have to get to work and you need to be on time.”

Mats shook his head so vigorously that it sent his glasses rattling, sent tears cascading down his cheeks. Not only that, but there were now two dark underarm stains on Benni’s shirt, contrasting greatly with the childish meltdown Mats was currently having. He looked downright ridiculous and he knew it, but he hardly cared.

Heaving a great sigh, Mr. Hummels released his grasp on Mats’ arm and backed up. This battle was not even worth fighting because Mats had already won. He shut the door and meandered off towards the building while Mats watched, wondering what his dad was doing.

Once he was sure his dad was out of sight, he scraped the napkin up from the ground and scrubbed at his face until his cheeks and eyes felt raw and he felt like he might be bleeding. And then he released a tormented cry that he’d been courteous enough to spare his dad of.

One thing was absolutely certain and that was that he was not going to this stupid program.

He could run away right now. He could hop right out of this car and run away, and this time he’d be sure he wasn’t found. This time he’d be sure not to come back, even if it meant he couldn’t see Benni ever again.

But he couldn’t do that. He’d already hurt Benni enough.

Mats stayed put in the car, awaiting his fate.

Sure enough, his dad came into sight again, this time with a young woman with a light brown boy haircut and a pale yellow t-shirt. And Mats got embarrassed all of a sudden. He looked quickly in the rearview mirror to check that it didn’t look like he’d been crying. But it did. Oh, it did. He looked like a mess. He was ashamed. Benni had seen him cry before and so had his dad, but this woman, whoever she was, hadn’t.

Mats decided to blame his moodiness on the fact that he hadn’t smoked in over a week. He was angry. He’d been turned into a great, blubbering disaster and none of it was his fault.

Before he could continue feeling sorry for himself, the door opened on the other side and the woman was sitting in Kira’s booster seat next to him while his dad stood awkwardly in the parking lot.

What the hell?

“Hello, Mats. It’s a pleasure to meet you,” the woman greeted him. She had a pleasant, upbeat voice that pissed Mats off. She held out her hand, but Mats didn’t take it, keeping his arms firmly planted to his sides.

“Hi,” Mats grumbled, refusing to look at her. What was she doing in his car?

“I’m Astrid. I’ll be your counselor for these next few weeks. I think you’ll like the other kids in our group. Do you want to come inside and meet them?” she said.

“No. I don’t need a counselor but thanks for asking,” Mats replied hoarsely, pulling at the strands that were falling off the lining of his cast. His arm was beginning to itch and it was uncomfortable. And then all of a sudden, he couldn’t stand it anymore.

“My arm fucking itches!” he bellowed at no one in particular.

Astrid arched an eyebrow. “If you come inside, I can give you a pack of ice and it’ll cool down your cast which will help the itching.”

“You’re trying to trick me into coming inside,” Mats grunted. “I’m not coming, even if my arm feels like it has cockroaches crawling around in it.”

“I’m not forcing you to come inside. I’m _asking_ you to because I would love to have your company. You seem like a very humorous and clever young man,” Astrid explained.

“Well, I wouldn’t get my hopes up if I were you. You’ll probably be disappointed with me,” Mats informed her, trying to stick his fingers up inside his cast so he could scratch it.

“I doubt I’ll be. Maybe you could tell me a little about yourself?” Astrid suggested.

Mats looked up and almost laughed. “Oh, that’s easy. My name is Mats Hummels, I smoke weed every single day, I beat up my boyfriend and I tried to kill myself on Monday.”

“Oh, dear,” Astrid sighed, wringing her hands together.

“Tell me about it,” Mats agreed proudly. “I’m a wreck.”

He hated to admit it, but he was beginning to like this Astrid a little bit.

“Well, I think we can work on that. But we’re not going to get anywhere by sitting here in this car all day, are we?” Astrid said, her blue eyes twinkling.

“No, no, we aren’t. Unless we started driving, of course. But I’m assuming that’s not what you mean,” Mats pointed out.

Astrid smiled. “No, not exactly.”

“I’ll come inside then. But only to get a pack of ice,” said Mats dramatically. “And I wasn’t crying, by the way. I just have allergies. That’s why I look like I was crying, but I wasn’t really.”

“I believe you,” Astrid assured him with a wink. “I’d be happy to loan you some allergy reliever.”

“Oh, no, I can’t have that! I’m allergic to allergy reliever, too. I could die if I use it, it’s happened to me before,” Mats improvised, knowing very well that he had no allergies. “I’m not lying.”

“I believe you,” Astrid repeated seriously.

“You’d better,” Mats warned. He took off his glasses to wipe them clean on Benni’s shirt then slid them back on, opening the door and swinging his legs over the side of the seat as he did so.

And with that, Mats followed Astrid across the sunny lot and into the sunlit building with its fresh gray and black tiles and numerous species of plants arranged in pots all around the lobby. Mr. Hummels pulled his son into a quick, manly embrace before he headed off, uttering four words he never thought he’d say: “I’m proud of you.”

“Thanks,” Mats said. And then before he could stop himself, “I love you, dad.”

“I love you too. Do you want to borrow my jacket to cover up those awful pit stains of yours?” he offered, letting go and already beginning to pull his work jacket off his shoulders. He’d always known that Mats was a sweater, a nervous sweater and a sweater in heat. Mats had unfortunately inherited that from him.

“No, it’s part of my expression,” Mats declined before marching off with Astrid up a wide staircase.

Mr. Hummels almost smiled before heading back out. But he didn’t, because that wouldn’t have been fair. He felt the corners of his mouth threatening to fold up and he didn’t allow them to because he was the reason why Mats was here in the first place. He was the reason why Mats felt the way he did, why he had done what he had done last Monday.

He thought about what had been happening at this exact time last week and immediately wished he hadn’t.

Biting his lips, Mr. Hummels returned to his car, sensing the loneliness now that Mats was gone.


	30. Coming Home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mats talks to his doctor..

_From: Benni[]  
How was it?_

_To: Benni[]  
I had to listen to a cracker for 10 minutes_

_From: Benni[]  
And what did it sound like?_

_To: Benni[]  
Nothing. Crackers don’t make noise_

_From: Benni[]  
Maybe they do and we just can’t hear it. Maybe our ears just can’t pick up the sound waves because they are too high or too low. Like you know how bats and elephants can hear things we can’t_

_To: Benni[]  
Or maybe crackers don’t fucking make noise_

_From: Benni[]  
Or maybe you weren’t supposed to be listening for any sounds, but what the cracker was trying to communicate with you_

_To: Benni[]  
That wasn’t the activity_

_From: Benni[]  
What was it then?_

_To: Benni[]  
It was a concentration exercise. We were supposed to use our five senses to observe a saltine cracker, so I stroked it, examined it and counted all the granules of salt, smelled it, licked it, and listened to it. I can assure you that it was not trying to tell me anything_

_From: Benni[]  
Did you pee on it to test its chemical properties?_

_To: Benni[]  
No Benedikt, that isn’t using purely your five senses, thats bringing in a variable_

_From: Benni[]  
Okay smartypants. I gotta go do homework, good luck with your doctor tonight. Let me know how it goes_

Mats grinned to himself as he reread the text conversation he and Benni had had when Mats was allowed to go home at three o’clock. He had had to power his phone off and give it to Astrid for the day because she didn’t want him to be distracted by it. And when Mats had shrugged and pulled out _Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone_ to kill the time, Astrid had confiscated that as well. She wanted Mats to fully participate in the day’s activities.

There turned out to be five other kids in Mats’ group. There were other groups with other counselors, and some of the groups were larger than others, but Mats thought he’d been assigned to an okay group. There was one other guy in it, an overweight ginger kid with pimples who didn’t talk once the whole day so Mats didn’t know anything about him. The rest were girls; two of them suffering from eating disorders (one of which refused to put on shoes), another one of them had apparently been suicidal and the last one living in the aftermath of a chronic episode of addiction, particularly to drugs and alcohol. One of the girls with an eating disorder (the one _with_ shoes) also happened to be completely enamored with Mats. He caught her staring at him multiple times throughout the day with her eyes bulging out of her skeleton-like face.

“She thinks you’re hot,” the alcoholic girl whose name was Kelly whispered not-so-subtly in his ear during the saltine cracker activity.

Mats, pulling his attention away from his ever-so-captivating cracker, had grimaced at that. “I’m so gay that sometimes I forget I have a dick,” he had said back through his teeth.

Kelly raised an eyebrow, her own cracker laying forgotten on the table. “How do you know?”

“Experience,” Mats shrugged.

“You’ve been around?”

“Yeah. I’m a slut. Didn’t feel a thing. I’ve got a boyfriend now though,” Mats explained, not quite lying but not quite telling the truth either. Benni had, after all, just wanted some space for a little bit to allow things to settle down and Mats was more than happy to give it to him even if it seemed impossible.

“Do you?” Kelly seemed suspicious.

Mats nodded. “Yep. He’s about six foot two, dirty blond, has freckles, can be a smartass sometimes, but he is adorable and I am so lucky to have him. Lucky as in, really lucky.”

“And I bet he’s lucky to have you,” Kelly had replied genuinely.

Mats flashed her a smile. Kelly was wrong, but she could believe whatever she wanted.

Later on in the day, they had joined some of the other groups for joint activities but Mats found himself next to the bone-thin girl who thought he was hot, regardless. They had all been given several small bean bags and were supposed to be throwing them at the wall in expressive ways. Mats never really figured that one out; the only emotion he could incorporate into his throw was anger, so he went for different levels of anger instead of different emotions; he made an irritated throw, an entraged throw, and just as he was making an explosive throw, he caught the girl peering at him.

Mats waved at her, then continued his throw. It hit the wall with a popping _smack!_ , exploded in the air and landed on the hardwood floor with its filling raining down all over the place. Even with his left arm, he had a terrific throw. He had always been quite excellent at dodgeball in PE in middle school, and more than once his target had ended up crumpling over with the wind knocked out of them after having been pelted in the stomach or being sent off with a nosebleed. And more than once, he had been reminded that this was a friendly game and to please tone it down or he’d need to sit out, please and thank you. He didn’t feel too bad, though, because he only ever threw that hard when was aiming for other boys, namely Bastian and Lukas and all the other snotty footballers who seemed to think they were so much better than everyone else...

“You gonna throw?” he asked her.

She shook her head and Mats was afraid her tiny body would crumple from the sheer force.

“You should. It’s fun,” he suggested.

“What happened to your arm?” she piped up after they had been staring each other down curiously for thirty seconds.

Mats looked down at his cast and remembered what had happened to his arm. His first thought was to lie; he had already prepared a reasonably believable story for anyone who asked that he had caught himself on a branch and sprained his wrist trying to break his fall. But then he remembered where he was. He remembered that everyone here was struggling, some worse than others and that he had it better than a lot of his peers. So he walked a little closer to her, the sound of bean bags making contact with the wall occurring in a sporadic background rhythm, and he told her that he hurt himself with a knife.

The girl responded by rolling up her own sleeves to reveal arms that were decorated with stacks of cuts in deep, straight lines. The sight of it made Mats’ stomach churn and all the background noises fade away.

_Why would someone do that to themselves?_

_Why would someone mutilate themselves?_

And instead of asking for some kind of closure, he decided to just think of it as among the most heartbreaking things he’d ever seen in his life.

He gulped thickly and said, “Don’t do that anymore and I won’t either.”

All she did was bite her lip and nod, then turn away sharply. Mats did his best to blink away the image and though it blurred, it didn’t really fade until several hours later. He noted that he was glad he had been far too out of it to remember what his own arm looked like before it was wrapped up.

“Who are you texting, Mats?”

His mom’s voice pulled him back into the present, in the car ride to his session with the psychiatrist, and he shook his head to clear it.

“Benni,” he replied.

“Benniiiiii!” Kira squeaked from beside him in her booster seat. She had developed a taboo of sorts on Benedikt’s name and would become instantly alert whenever it was mentioned. The whole family was coming along to the doctor session, but Mr. Hummels planned on taking Kira to the bookstore or the park while Mrs. Hummels sat in with Mats, and then they’d all go out for frozen yogurt afterwards.

“I thought you were giving him space?” Mr. Hummels asked.

“I am, but he asked how my day went,” Mats clarified, locking his phone and setting it on his thigh. How his mom could tell he was scrolling through his texts was a mystery, but it was true that the extremely stupid grin plastered across his face was quite the giveaway.

“That’s nice of him. He’s a nice boy,” Mrs. Hummels shared with them.

 _Duh,_ thought Mats. But at the same time, he was a bit irritated at himself for not asking Benni how he was. He had no idea how Benni had been doing, if he was doing okay. He wanted to unlock his phone again and ask, but he resisted because he didn’t want to bother Benni while he was working. Plus, there was the fact that texting was a huge hassle with only one hand, his non-dominant one at that.

(Mats couldn’t wait to get this stupid cast off).

So instead, he joined in the discussion that his parents were having about how fabulous Benedikt was, Kira jumping in with her own rather resolute opinion on the matter every so often.

\-----

The Hummels family arrived at their destination with a flourish. Dr. Kalita’s office was one among many in a homely, apartment-style building. The building was tucked away off a quiet drive with clusters of tall oak trees.

Once everyone had filed out of the car, Mr. and Mrs. Hummels pecked lips and Kira responded with that face every six year old saves only for when they witness adults doing something icky, like kissing. Mats couldn’t help but feel a little bit of pride at the irony, recalling that she had been the one encouraging him and Benedikt to kiss at the concert…

Mats quickly shook that memory away, knowing it would lead to other worse things.

After Mr. and Mrs. Hummels said their respective goodbyes and goodlucks, the former took Kira’s hand to lead her off to the playground across the drive and she hopped along besides him, her shorter legs struggling to keep up with her dad’s lanky ones, her two messy pigtails bouncing along with the effort and the back of one of her sandals coming loose.

“Ready?” Mats’ mom asked once the two others were out of earshot.

“I guess,” Mats replied. He stuck his hands in his pockets and followed a few paces behind her as they entered the building, which seemed more like someone’s home than one for commercial use. It helped Mats feel a little less apprehensive, though he still vaguely wished that he were six years old again, carefree and innocent, and was being led off to the playground instead of waiting in here.

The waiting area was a small, cozy living room with couches, magazines and a coffee maker with a selection of different coffees, teas, and even hot chocolate. There was classical music playing, and Mats assumed it was for privacy because he could hear voices behind a closed wooden door but couldn’t make out what was being said. Mats and his mom were the only two people in the small area, and it was really quite comfortable. He sat on the couch opposite from her and picked up a magazine which was devoted entirely to various topics and articles concerning Bipolar disorder, but he couldn’t really concentrate on reading it. He was beginning to feel more and more nervous. Bipolar disorder? Is that what was wrong with him? What _was_ wrong with him? Why was he here?

“What time is my appointment?” he wondered aloud, flipping through the glossy pages of the magazine and finding a strange sense of pleasure as they ran across his fingertips.

“Five fifteen,” Mrs. Hummels answered, glancing at her watch as she prepared a cup of coffee. “That was ten minutes ago. He’s late. I hope he doesn’t cut your time short.”

“He’s probably busy,” Mats reasoned, but really he was hoping that Dr. Kalita would never finish with his previous patient; he didn’t want to go in there. He’d been to counseling before as a little kid, but still this was something foreign to him and something he always thought would happen to someone else. He never thought that _he_ would be the one here.

Mrs. Hummels sat back down on the couch and sipped her coffee, making a face as she pulled the cup away from her mouth -- homemade coffee was always much better, but this would do. She tried to hide her irritation at the delay, at the fact that this doctor was overbooked and that her son was only one of many sufferers that he was making money off of. She reminded herself that this was the only way Mats could get prescribed medicine if he needed it and that the real healing would come from within him.

“Do you want me to go in there with you?” she asked after a while, after a brief intermission between two classical songs.

_Yes. No. Yes. No._

Did Mats really need his mom to be in there with him?

“Yes.”

“Okay.”

Not much more was said after that. Mats pretended to read the Bipolar magazine while his mom pretended to read one on home organization and the music droned on in the background, making both of them sleepy in addition to the dim lamps lighting the space. The only reason Mats was able to stay awake was because the air conditioning was running at an extremely low temperature and making him wish that he had picked up a sweatshirt before they left home; the hairs on his arms were standing up and his nipples were starting to show through Benni’s technical shirt, which in turn reminded him of Benni’s nipples.

Mats smiled.

And finally, the voices behind the door became louder and were diced with finality. Mats’ heart jumped in pace. He set the magazine back down on the coffee table but continued to stare at it and he was still staring at it when the door opened, revealing a woman who slipped out too quickly to be identified and a man who Mrs. Hummels presumed to be Dr. Kalita. He had a little bit of a belly, was wearing a plaid dress shirt tucked into a pair of dress pants and appeared to be of South Asian descent.

Mrs. Hummels jumped up from the couch a little too enthusiastically, nearly sloshing her coffee all over the front of her shirt. The two adults introduced themselves and exchanged a firm handshake but Mats was trying to block out everything they said. He only started listening and looked up when the brief conversation inevitably turned to him.

“This is my son Mats. He can be a bit shy sometimes…”

“I am _not_ shy!” Mats interjected, standing up and crossing his arms. Since when had he ever been _shy?_ No one in the Hummels family was shy, and especially Kira who was sent to the principal nearly everyday for misbehaving and not following directions and hiding when it was time to come in from recess. Shyness was not a Hummels family trait.

Dr. Kalita let out a hearty laugh and held out his hand. “It’s a pleasure to meet you Mats, I’m Dr. Kalita. Your mother has told me that you’d prefer if she sat in with us?”

Mats grudgingly took the man’s hand and embarrassment swept over him. “No. I want her to stay out here.”

Mrs. Hummels looked surprise at Mats’ change in mind, but she was relieved more than offended at the fact that Mats was comfortable enough to go in by himself. She let Mats follow the psychiatrist through the wooden door embellished with a gold plaque labelled ‘Dr. Kalita’ and silently hoped that it would all go smoothly and that Mats would not freak out. It was looking good so far; his only minor freak out had occurred this morning in the car with her husband, and that was before he’d even gone in. But the recovery had been relatively painless, and they had made it further this time around…

The more Mrs. Hummels thought about what her husband had told her about this morning, however, the more she felt it was unfair to blame Mats for what had happened. It had been more of an emotional turmoil than a refusal, and Mats had every right to feel the way he did. In fact, it was a good thing that Mats was now coming to terms with his emotions instead of hiding everything behind a mask of disinterest.

And that meant that she and her husband would need to do the same. They would need to apologize to Mats for forcing him to bottle up his feelings all these years simply because that is what they were doing. Acceptance and moving on was different from denial and moving on because with denial, you never really can move on.

The three of them needed to sit down and talk about the other twin once and for all. Tonight. They had prolonged it enough already.

\-----

Mats was perched on the edge of a leather couch in Dr. Kalita’s office. Dr. Kalita’s office, unlike the waiting room, took advantage of the fluorescent lights that were set in the ceiling, but other than that the room was just as homely. A single box of tissues sat atop a side table and Mats knew it was there because people cried in here. But Mats was not going to cry again; he had nothing to cry about any more. He’d already cried about what he did to Benni and about who he was without his brother, and he was tired of crying. It was exhausting and shameful.

“So, Mats, I don’t know anything about you except what your mom told me on the phone,” he began pompously while he dug out a clipboard and a pen from underneath the coffee table. “Do you want to share anything with me outfront?”

Mats kept his expression blank and didn’t relax on the couch. He sat like a statue, guarded and unreactive and cold. “Will you be writing down what I tell you?”

“Yes, I will be taking notes on what you tell me. But of course these notes will remain absolutely confidential and you may see them whenever you wish. This is only so I have something to remind me of what we’ve talked about when you come back next week,” the psychiatrist explained impatiently, as if he’d repeated those same lines over and over again to countless patients.

Mats narrowed his eyes. He didn’t like the idea that this man was going to be keeping notes about him.

“I’m here to help you, Mats. But I can’t help you if I don’t know what’s going on,” Dr. Kalita continued, looking expectantly at him.

 _He’s here to make money off my misery,_ thought Mats bitterly. _He’s going to rush through my appointment so he can get to the next one. The more prescriptions he writes, the more money he makes._

Resolved in what he was going to tell this man and what he was going to keep to himself, Mats finally leaned back into the cushions, put his hands behind his head and made himself comfortable as best he could with his cast in the way.

“Alright, well let’s see,” he said smoothly, looking up at the ceiling as if he were thinking very hard. “The reason I ended up here is because I ran away last Monday and I accidentally tried to kill myself.”

Dr. Kalita scribbled something down, probably something like _doesn’t seem concerned, acting like this is all a big joke_. “How was it an accident?”

“Because I didn’t know what I was doing. I think I was possessed,” Mats justified.

Dr. Kalita nodded and jotted down a note. “Do you remember this all occurring?”

“Kind of. I don’t remember doing it at the time but I had a nightmare while I was at the hospital.” Mats was surprised by his own brutal honesty. He didn’t even feel embarrassed about it. Why should he? He was probably an angel compared to some of the patients this man had seen.

“How did you feel about it?”

“Pain,” Mats said. “I just felt pain. I puked when I woke up from it cause my arm and stomach were hurting so bad. Do you want to know why I hurt my arm and stomach?”

The psychiatrist simply nodded to urge him on. He had the boy talking now. That was good. It was hard to get patients to open up and talk sometimes. Others were far more eager to share their life stories while others, like this Mats, seemed to only be keen on what was necessary for him to know.

At this point, Mats sat up again and took off his glasses; he was not used to them and they were bugging him. Rubbing where they’d been pressing into his nose, he explained: “The reason I hurt my arm and stomach was because that’s where I was burned when I was a little kid. I’m a twin, but my twin died in the same fire that burned me and I was so tired of having those scars so I decided to give myself new ones. I think I meant to tear them out so I could be pure, but this--” he held up his casted arm-- “happened instead.”

Dr. Kalita scribbled away furiously, nodding comprehendingly whenever Mats revealed something new.

“And you know what else?” Mats continued passionately, tapping his foot against the carpet and drumming his fingers against the couch. He was getting antsy and hot, he could feel a triangle of sweat pooling up in his lower back and glistening on his neck and nose and his deodorant seemed to have given up on him. “My boyfriend thinks I have unexplainable, sudden mood swings that aren’t normal. He says I go from angry to sad to cheeky in seconds and that it scares him. I’ve had a few hallucinations too, two weeks ago I saw a man in my room who wasn’t really there, although that may just have been because I drank a shit ton of vodka that night. But last week when my boyfriend was visiting me at the hospital I thought I had to go to the bathroom and I could’ve sworn it was coming out, I _felt_ it and I _saw_ and it _hurt_ but it never actually happened. I’m not sure if that was the drugs they gave me because I’d been off them for over a day and I don’t even know if hallucinations were supposed to be a side effect...Anyway, he left after that, he left me there because he couldn’t deal with it anymore and he needs me to get better so here I am, trying to get better.”

Mats felt thirsty after his spiel. He licked the parched inside of his mouth and watched as Dr. Kalita took notes.

“Do you have a fan or something in here, doc? I’m getting hot.”

“I’m afraid I don’t. Do you need to step outside for a minute? The AC’s running, so you may be having a physical reaction to some of the things you’re remembering,” Dr. Kalita said smartly.

Mats fanned his face with his hand. He could feel perspiration gathering around his crotch now, inside his cast and it was very uncomfortable. His ears and neck felt like they had steam coming off of them. “I’ll just go get some water…”

Dr. Kalita told him that there was a bathroom across from the waiting area and he could grab a cup by the coffee maker. Mats left the office without another word and hustled across the waiting area to snag a cup and enter the small bathroom, closing the door behind him with unnecessary force. The first thing he did was tear off his shirt and unbutton his jeans, allowing perspiration to evaporate and cool his fiery skin. He then filled up his cup at the sink and guzzled it down with large, noisy gulps. When he was done, he tossed it aside and proceeded to splash his face with cold water, then his chest where it dripped down and illuminated the raw welts on the right side of his abdomen…

He collapsed on the lid of the toilet when he was done, sinking his overheated head into his left hand and his elbows into his thighs. Waves of heat sent painful, throbbing flashes through his brain. What had he done? He had just blabbered away all his personal business to a complete stranger, to someone who was helping him, granted, but being _paid_ to help him...Running his damp fingers through his hair, Mats decided that he wasn’t going to go back. He couldn’t risk it. He couldn’t risk telling the psychiatrist anything more about Benni.

He didn’t know long he sat there, it might’ve been a minute or thirty for all he cared. He didn’t know how many times he ran his callused fingertips over the wounds on his stomach, causing goosebumps to rise on his skin and contrast sensationally with the heat rising off of it, and he didn’t care that he was picking at his stitches and causing small droplets of thick, bright blood to bubble up…

A knock on the door. “Mats?” His mom poked her head in and Mats flustered.

“What on earth are you doing, honey?” She sounded shocked, afraid even.

“I got too warm…” Mats explained lamely, crumpling in shame of his body even if this was his own mother. He snatched up his shirt and tugged it clumsily over his head and torso, hoping his mother hadn’t seen the blood, then he fumbled with the button and zipper on his jeans with shaky hands. No one, not even himself, had seen his body since he’d hit puberty. He didn’t look in the mirror and always changed inside a bathroom stall the few times he actually dressed out for P.E., outright skipping class for weeks on end whenever they entered the swimming unit. He ignored the strange looks he received because no one understood why he was so ashamed of his body, he was tall and well-developed and all the girls (and plenty of guys) swooned over him so why?

“Let’s go back,” he mumbled, brushing past his mom and prowling for Dr. Kalita’s office with no detours.

Mrs. Hummels followed him back in wordlessly and sat next to him on the leather couch, crossing her legs, uncrossing them, then crossing them the other way. She exchanged a look with the psychiatrist while Mats retrieved his glasses and arranged them atop his head so they were still tucked behind his ears but he didn’t have to look through the lenses.

Dr. Kalita cleared his throat. “Cooled down a bit?”

“Sort of. My arm is itching, though. I feel like this cast is choking me.” And it was. He had to put a plastic bag over it when he showered, and he was sure the inside of it was caked with dirt and scum and dried sweat by now and he still needed to have it on for two more weeks.

Dr. Kalita fixed with with a quick sympathetic look before straightening his notes with a flourish. “Now, I did talk with your mom a bit while you were gone, but I did not bring up anything you shared with me. It seems like you’ve developed some anxiety and minor paranoia over the years after losing your brother, and the longer it’s gone untreated the more it has affected you.” He gestured while he spoke and Mats listened intently. “To me, it looks like you’ve developed a fear of abandonment and...and…” he shook his hand back and forth, searching for a word. “...loss of trust and you’ll go to extreme and insensible measures to make sure that doesn’t happen, including inflicting damage on yourself. Does that make sense to you?”

Mats mulled this over and looked at his mom for help. She shook her head, indicating that she was not going to speak for him.

“I think that sounds about right,” Mats finally said. That explained why he’d been so desperate to hold onto Benni because he’d grown attached to him. That’s why he’d hurt Benni. He was subconsciously trying to ward Benni off before Benni could abandon him. That’s why he’d gone and broken Benni’s trust before Benni could break his.

“I think if we started off with a low dose of sertraline for you, you’ll find that you have more control over your mood. Keep in mind the medication is not meant to solve the problem by itself, but it is meant to give you the ability to heal for yourself. Right now, I believe that you have an imbalance of serotonin levels in your brain which influences your mood and can create anxiety. We’ll start you off with the lowest dosage and we can increase it as needed. As for the hallucinations, it does sound like they were brought on by the substances you mentioned, but if they continue to be a problem then we will address it. Have you been having any problems with sleeping? Eating?”

Mats told him that he wasn’t. Dr. Katila went on to explain more about sertraline and serotonin, but Mats found he didn’t really understand nor care as long as the drug would help make him less shitty a person, so he drifted off into a vague fantasy of him and Benni hopping on an airplane and going far, far away from here…

“So how long will he need to keep taking the medication?” His mom jumped into the discussion after a lengthy silence on her part. _Cha-ching_ , she thought. _More prescriptions, more money._

As much as she wanted to think that this man had the same goals as her and her husband, she had to remember that this was an industry, too.

“It varies, I’ve had patients who take it for a few months then wean off of it and others for whom it becomes a necessity to function. Usually the brain is triggered and starts producing more serotonin naturally after the medication kicks in, so it’s a process that takes time,” Dr. Katila answered.

Mrs. Hummels nodded. So if Mats were to be on this medication for this, then that would mean they would need to continue coming here for years to get the prescription renewed. She only wanted the best for Mats and desperately wanted to see him happy and thriving and she knew the medication could help him immensely, but she also wanted Mats to learn to face his struggles on his own without relying on a drug for the rest of his life. She understood that it was necessary to an extent, but she didn’t want to prolong it any more than that.

At this point, Dr. Kalita had extracted a pink pad from underneath the coffee table that looked suspiciously like prescription slips. “I’ll go ahead and write him up for one twenty-five milligram tablet, once per morning. Thirty tablets will last one month, but I’ll be seeing Mats again before that so we can discuss it. It’ll start kicking in after three days to a week, and again, I emphasize that it’s a process and the longer it’s taken, the more time the brain has to adjust.” Mrs. Hummels nodded her approval and Dr. Katila began to scribble on the pad.

“And are there any side-effects we should know about?” Mrs. Hummels inquired.

“His dosage is so low that I doubt it’ll be a problem, he’ll have plenty of time to get used to it before we increase the dosage. If anything there may be some nausea or headaches within the first week or so, but it shouldn’t last long at all. Most patients tolerate it pretty well,” the psychiatrist replied without missing a beat. He tore off the paper and handed it to Mrs. Hummels, who took it hesitantly.

Mats, still zoned out, figured he was getting his prescription but wasn’t listening to the details. Too agitated to sit still, he got up and started wandering around, pacing the room and staring out the windows while his mom wrote Dr. Katila a check and then went on to discuss insurance stuff.

Before the frozen yogurt expedition, the Hummels family stopped by Safeway to pick up Mats’ prescription. Once it was in his hands, he took it out of its paper bag and rolled the small bottle around in his fingers, the tablets rattling around inside the plastic. It was translucent orange and a collection of tiny white squares filled only about the first inch of the bottle.

“Take one of those first thing each morning, Mats. You can’t forget. And try to eat something with it too, I don’t want them to make you feel sick,” his mom instructed him.

“And no more smoking weed, please. I already confiscated that shit from your backpack, by the way,” his father elaborated, looking very pleased with himself and a little sheepish at his use of the ‘s’ word.

“Right,” Mats said distractedly, taking a bite of his vanilla yogurt with sour gummy worms and cherries and dropping the bottle back in its bag. “Stop kicking me!” he added when he realized his sister had been swinging her legs back and forth underneath the table and pummeling his shin with a devilish, caramel-smeared smirk for the past five minutes. Kira burst out laughing.

Mats never thought he’d be one of those kids who had to take an antidepressant. But now he was.

The frozen yogurt expedition came to a screeching halt when Kira thought it would be a good idea to announce rather loudly that she needed ‘some more chocolate shit’ for her yogurt, and the Hummels family gathered their trash and raced out of there before anyone could shoot them dirty looks about their parenting, Mr. and Mrs. Hummels arguing the entire way back home. Mr. Hummels claimed that ‘it could’ve been much worse’, meaning that Kira could’ve dropped an ‘F’ bomb during reading lessons at school or yelled it on the playground or something.

“I do not want to ever hear that word come out of your mouth again, young lady,” Mrs. Hummels scolded, turning around briefly after she tried to speed through a yellow light but it turned red at the last second so she had to come to a gut-wrenching halt (she was a far more aggressive driver than Mr. Hummels -- both she and Mats).

“Daddy said it, though, and so did you this morning! And Matsi says it all the time!” Kira chirped, still bursting into the occasional fit of giggles from her hilarious crime.

“That doesn’t mean you can say it, it’s a very naughty word.”

“You can only start saying it when you turn seven. When’s your birthday again?” Mr. Hummels added cluelessly, scratching his balding head.

“It’s on June sixteenth, daddy!” Kira observed, sounding as if her own daddy forgetting when her birthday was was the most obnoxious thing ever. She always insisted on celebrating her half birthday too, which happened to fall on Mats’ birthday and annoyed him very much because all the attention was given to her instead of him. Though he had been informed by Benedikt that he could’ve had it worse and been born on Leap Day like he had (Mats made a mental note to do something very special for Benni’s birthday since this coming February had 29 days).

“Don’t listen to your father.”

“Fuckball,” said Kira.

Mats had been playing Candy Crush on his phone with a dull expression on his face, not participating in his family’s inane discussion but at this point he let out a snort so atrocious that he could’ve been communicating with roadkill.

If looks could kill, both of the Hummels men would’ve dropped dead right there and then.


	31. Save My Life

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The grand finale.

“Kira, sweetheart, could you please go outside and jump on the trampoline so daddy and I can talk to Mats for a little bit?”

It was after dinner, and Mrs. Hummels was busy transferring dirty dishes from the sink to the dishwasher. After arriving home from the frozen yogurt outing, she and Mr. Hummels had leashed up Silver and gone out for a walk which the former used as an opportunity to update the latter on exactly what had happened at the therapy session that afternoon. The evening was cool and raw, the sun growing heavy in the sky and preparing to sink into the ocean somewhere far off. Normally, she would not have instructed Kira to go outside and play when it was dark, but this conversation could not be put off any longer and Mats deserved their full attention without his little sister running around commanding attention.

One day, it would be necessary to pull Kira aside for her own conversation. But she didn’t need to know yet, know why her brother was the way he was and that she really had two big brothers who were the same age and looked exactly the same but that one of them was in heaven. After all, she was only six and hadn’t been affected by the tragedy, though in a way she was an outcome of it. It pained Mrs. Hummels to think of Kira in that way, but the truth was that a third child wasn’t even a consideration until one of their two was so cruelly taken away from them. But a girl. An undeniably troublemaking but irresistibly sweet daughter. They hadn’t meant to have a daughter but they did. And now Mats had a sister instead of a brother. It was a blessing brought on by a curse.

They hadn’t even had time to prepare. They hadn’t been given the chance to say goodbye.

The guilt and the self-blame during those years immediately after the other twin’s death ate away at both her and her husband. No one was to blame, so who better to blame than themselves? For not enforcing the rule that the boys stay away from the kitchen while the oven was on. For being too confident in the wiring behind that oven. For thinking nothing could go wrong, that it wouldn’t happen to them.

No matter how many years went by, that cursed day stayed sharp and clear as a crystal in her memory. She could still hear that deafening _crack_ as if it were the first time she was hearing it no matter how many times it replayed in her memory. She could still see the oven, heating up their tuna casserole one moment and then enshrouded in flames the next without so much as a fair warning, or any type of warning for that matter. But what she could remember the most was the scream -- a shrill, childish scream that no child, no human should ever have any reason to make. That scream took all the pain and fear in the world and condensed it into one. While Mr. Hummels had spun off in a senseless panic to phone the fire department, she couldn’t even think about leaving her boys for one second and thank god he was home early from work that day otherwise all three of them would have died.

She didn’t know which twin had screamed at the time, which one was in more pain. And then she realized it was Mats because he was the one suffering. Jonas was the one who’d got off easy. Mats was the one who had to deal with not only the burns, but the scars that would plague and haunt him for years and years after the fire was put out. She snatched her twins away from what ultimately killed both of them, one in each arm, Mats in her left and Jonas in her right and beat the flames away from them until only the blackened, smoking singes of their clothing remained, and that’s when she knew that only one of them was going to pull through from the damage because something, she couldn’t pinpoint what, but _something_ was vastly different from what she felt in her right arm versus in her left.

The rest of it was a blur, a cold, numb, excruciating blur. The ambulances and fire engines arrived, the boys were lifted into the ambulance and the only thing she could remember after that was that her husband hadn’t let go of her once that entire night, not even when the doctor arrived in their private room at the hospital with a grave expression and proceeded to inform them in the most sensitive way possible that one of the boys had suffered several third degree burns but would fully recover.

One of them.

The rest did not need to be said.

It wasn’t fair. How could it have happened? The flames had only laid their unforgiving hands on the boys for seconds. But one second was more than enough to invade the other boy’s heart and desecrate it beyond function or repair.

She did not need to be told who had lived and who had died. She already knew the moment she pulled her boys into her arms that it was the last time she’d ever hold the boy in her right.

And who gave that doctor the right to claim that Mats would ‘fully recover’? He never recovered. It was still hurting him today. He would always be missing something.

“Can Matsi come outside with me?” Kira stopped twirling around in circles (she had been doing that thing that all kids do at some point where they make themselves dizzy so when they lay down the world is still spinning) and pouted, her sweet voice yanking Mrs. Hummels away from that grim, ghastly memory and into the present. Kira hated to be excluded from things.

Mats rolled his eyes and belched unrestrainedly (earning a squirmish ‘ewwww!’ from Kira) as he placed his plate next to the sink. It was polished clean with the exception of his untouched mountain of green beans and some spicy barbecue sauce he’d poured all over his chicken and rice. “No, stupid, because they want to _talk_ to me. Were you even listening?”

“ _You’re_ stupid and fat and ugly!” Kira came back with, but the munchkin did as she was told and flounced out into the backyard, instantly forgetting the reason she had ended up outside in the first place because she loved the trampoline so much and hey, she wasn’t usually allowed outside by herself after dark so this was fun!

Mr. Hummels went to switch on the outdoor lights for her then disappeared somewhere while Mrs. Hummels loaded the final dishes and snapped the dishwasher shut. She had to suppress a huge, theatrical sigh when she’d seen that Mats had left all his vegetables on the plate again. _What a waste,_ she thought as she scraped the green beans off the plate and into a container to store in the fridge and considered making Mats start doing this himself because he was sixteen after all and would be turning seventeen in just a few months time. They babied him a lot of the time, took pity on him and let him get his way, and for a good reason too, that reason being that he was so fragile despite his outward demeanor. But that needed to end soon.

Mrs. Hummels made her way into the master bedroom where her husband was seated on the edge of the great bed, looking pensive and slightly perturbed. He had always been the more reasonable one and could keep a cool head, but he was also a soft soul and got upset far more easily than she did. In those years after the tragedy, it had been him who’d spent day in and day out in tears while Mrs. Hummels was the one who kept things together. Eventually, this arrangement became problematic and led to horrific screaming matches mindless of whether Mats was around to witness them or not.

“He needs both of us. Come on,” Mrs. Hummels commanded softly, and she had to tug on his bony wrist like they were teenagers again and not grown adults and bribe him with a kiss to gather his courage and join Mats where he was already waiting in the living room for them.

The two of them took a seat on the loveseat across from the couch where Mats was lounged across, picking at his brittle fingernails on his casted arm like he couldn’t care less about what they had to discuss with him. His back rested against a throw pillow on the armrest and his knees were bent up to his chest, his elbows resting on top of them. A pack of frozen peas lay beside him on the couch; his arm was beginning to itch more often now.

Mr. Hummels began tapping his foot furiously, a nervous mannerism that Mats had also picked up on over the years. Mrs. Hummels placed a hand on his knee to calm him. If anyone was going to end up in tears tonight, it was going to be her beloved husband and she prayed for Mats’ sake that he could hold it together. Because they had accepted what had happened, they understood that nothing they could do could change the outcome and all they could do was make the best with what they had and be the best parents they could be to the surviving twin while cherishing the other one in their memories. But Mats hadn’t. He’d never had the opportunity to.

“Can you look at us, Mats?” Mrs. Hummels asked. “We want to talk to you about your brother.”

They still seldom spoke his name aloud. That was still painful. It was as if it were impolite to speak of him when he wasn’t around to hear it anymore.

“I’m listening,” Mats said calmly. “Talk away.” He lifted the package of peas, draped it over the bright blue tint of his cast and stared at it, no longer messing with his fingernails because it reminded him too much of Benni’s smooth, trimmed ones.

One look at her husband told Mrs. Hummels that he was not going to be any help here; he was holding it together, but barely. That was another thing that Mats took after him on; Mats also had high running emotions, but he had trained himself to suppress them so well that it must’ve been physically painful for him to hold them in. With Kira, they couldn’t tell yet because she was still so small, but she appeared to be taking after her mother on most things. She liked to take charge.

Mrs. Hummels took a deep breath, knowing that Mats’ lack of reaction was a bad sign indeed. “Do you have anything you want to ask us first?”

“Yes,” Mats replied without missing a beat, the word slipping out of the corner of his mouth like a missile.

Mr. Hummels’ knee trembled underneath her palm, and she could feel the perspiration there even through the material of his pants. She waited for Mats’ question with bated breath.

“I want to know why he died and I didn’t.”

A splitting shock ran through Mrs. Hummels. She didn’t know what she’d been expecting, but it certainly hadn’t been any questions that she actually knew the answer to. She thought she’d need to improvise, to comfort Mats more than anything. Not provide him with any real information about that night.

But he had asked, and this was his time. She would need to answer honestly and without any help from her degenerate husband who was really serving as just a necessary presence right now.

“Mats...you and your brother were very similar in many ways. You were two peas in a pod.” Mats looked up abruptly at this remark, his lips pursed. “Anything he did, you did and anything you did, he did. But he was always the more dominant of the two of you. He bossed you around and he got frustrated with you when you didn’t do what he wanted you to, so you learned to just follow him around and obey his orders.”

Mats recalled that he had been born a few minutes after his brother. He’d read somewhere that birth order had something to do with personality, but it seemed irrelevant in twins.

“You were in your room with your Play-Doh that night, rolling all the different colors together. You were happy right where you were, but Jonas wanted you to come into the kitchen with him, so you got up and you followed him. I was cooking dinner and I was on edge with the two of you running around and crashing into my legs and getting in the way, so I sent both of you to time-out. You hung your head and crawled into the corner of the kitchen, but he didn’t. And that’s when...that’s when the accident happened. You probably saved your own life with that one step away from the oven you took…”

Mr. Hummels hiccuped.

Mats shook his head ever so slightly, disbelieving. Unable to believe that he’d once been the docile one and that was what had determined his fate. What had changed then? He must’ve taken on his brother’s more controlling personality after Jonas was no longer there to control him.

“That isn’t fair,” Mats blurted out, far more aggressively than he intended. He wanted to be brave and brazen like Benni was, but he would never be as courageous or strong as the sandy blond.

“I know it isn’t, honey. None of it was fair.”

At this point, Mr. Hummels tried to excuse himself but Mrs. Hummels shot him a stern look and he remained planted on the couch, moving a little closer to his wife for comfort and holding his head in his hands.

Mats narrowed his eyes, and he was just barely shaking now, but it was enough to send the pack of frozen peas avalanching into the cushions. “And why has it taken you so long to tell me this?”

That was the question that Mrs. Hummels had been expecting, but her heart still raced against her bosom as she heard the accusatory yet truthful words leave her son’s white-with-anger lips. What explanation could she give Mats that wasn’t an excuse?

“We tried our best, Mats. We wanted what was best for you. But we were hurt too, and we didn’t want you to hurt any more than you were already hurting. What we didn’t know was that we were only making it worse for you--”

The pillow beneath Mats went catapulting across the room. It landed on the mantle and sent several framed photographs flying through the air and landing with a crunch onto the wooden floor. “That’s fucking bullshit! You did know exactly what you were doing, you saw me everyday, you saw how I was!”

“We’re sorry. All we can tell you is that we made a mistake and we’re truly sorry. We’re not perfect, but we do want to make it right for you.” Mr. Hummels’ soft voice flowed through the charge in the air, surprising everyone in the room.

Mats’ eyes were clouded with pure and unfaltered rage, much more than anger and every single vein in his young face were popping out as he thundered across the room, howling and destroying everything in his path without even caring what is was and his parents just sat there and let him do it. He broke lamps and he sent a remote flying at the television to dent the screen, and he couldn’t see or hear anything but white and the blood pounding in his ears until he found that he had got his hands on a piece of paper, a crayon drawing, and he had already demolished it with all the rage brewing inside of him before he realized what it had been. A family portrait. A family of four.

The only part of his sister’s drawing still distinguishable was a stick arm with a red mark at the end. A bracelet. He recognized it as the one Benni had been wearing on the day of the concert that mysteriously appeared on Kira’s wrist and hadn’t been taken off since.

He was not jealous of his six year old sister.

Mats stuck the final bit into his mouth, chewed it, then spat it out with all the ferocity he could muster, spit dripping down his chin and that’s when he felt two firm hands gripping his shoulders and the words “That’s enough, Mats” in his ear. And then he could smell himself, he smelled downright revolting because he’d been sweating heavily all day and emotional sweat smells worse than cooling sweat.

His dad was right. He couldn’t destroy everything in the house.

And all of a sudden, Mats was exhausted. Drained. Emptied. He had made so much progress today, but it was all too much to stomach right now. His eyelids were so heavy that it pained him to keep them open and made his head turbulent. He staggered over to the couch where he tried to collapse but his aim was off and he ended up on the floor instead, where he curled up into a ball and tried to make everyone go away once and for all. He was shaking so violently that he could’ve been having a seizure, but he was so close to the wonderful, inviting realm of unconsciousness that it wouldn’t matter soon.

“I want to go to sleep,” he tried to say, but it came out as more of an indistinguishable slur of noise. Still, he felt himself being scooped up into a pair of arms that could’ve only been his father’s like he was a child again and placed gingerly on the couch. He felt a blanket being smoothed out over him and a cool, refreshing pillow tucked under his wet, matted locks. He felt his tense, quaking muscles relax with the temperature and he soon fell into a deep, dreamless slumber.

\-----

“Is Matsi okay?” a small voice asked sometime after he had slipped away and was peacefully sleeping.

“He’s okay. He’s just very, very tired. He had a big day today. Do you want to follow daddy upstairs and bring his blanket and pillow?”

The little girl scampered to collect her brother’s belongings and trailed upstairs after her father, whom she handed the materials shyly over to them hurried back downstairs where she climbed into her mom’s lap.

Mrs. Hummels hugged her daughter tightly, with the kind of love that only a mother can have for her daughter and Kira nestled into her breast. “Why did Matsi have a big day?”

And why shouldn’t Kira get an honest answer? Hadn’t they already learned after what happened to Mats that children didn’t need to know everything, but they needed honesty, even if it was brutal?

Smoothing back Kira’s unruly mop of dark curls, she said gently: “Sometimes when people are very sad, they do things to hurt themselves and they need help to feel better. While you were on the playground today, Matsi was talking to a doctor who’s going to help him feel better.”

“But why is he so sad? Does he not like us anymore?” Kira piped up sadly.

“No, sweetie, he loves us and he loves you more than you can imagine. But sometimes he doesn’t love himself and it makes him feel yucky,” Mrs. Hummels explained.

“But _why?_ ”

She could tell her now. Kira was a smart girl; she had already noticed the boy who looked just like Matsi in the family photos and the concept of twins was not foreign to her. Neither was the concept of death.

So holding her closer than ever, possibly for her own sake more than her daughter’s, Mrs. Hummels told Kira why Mats was sad.

“When Matsi was very young, younger than you and before you were even born, he had a twin brother. But one day, there was an accident and Matsi’s brother went to heaven. It was a very long time ago, but Matsi is still very sad about it sometimes.”

And Kira looked up, an expression of the purest painted on her face, one that came with a child who understood death but still couldn’t really put it in place in her own life besides involving maybe a goldfish or two. “He _died?_ ”

All Mrs. Hummels could do was nod solemnly, as if saying the words ‘yes, he died’ wasn’t allowed. And as the little girl gradually realized that if he had been Matsi’s brother then he would’ve been _her_ brother too, her brown eyes began to pool up in mourning of the second big brother she never had. She started coughing, and her mom tapped her back rhythmically to get the ickies up as if she were a baby again.

Meanwhile, Mr. Hummels lingered upstairs even after he’d put Mats in his bed. He marvelled over how heavy Mats was yet at the same time how lean he was considering how unhealthfully he ate. He marvelled at how untroubled Mats looked in his sleep, how the frown that usually occupied his face was smoothed out. He wondered where Mats and Kira had inherited their rich complexions from seeing as both he and his wife were as white as they get.

Knowing he would never get another opportunity to, he prayed that not even the gods above were watching him as he pressed a kiss to his son’s forehead then ruffled his hair affectionately as if the latter would justify the former.

\-----

After a satisfying bowl of chicken flavored Ramen for a pre-dinner snack, Benedikt dumped out his backpack on the couch to find a pen so he could annotate _The Scarlet Letter_ for English.

Benedikt didn’t like _The Scarlet Letter_. He concluded that he wouldn’t recommend it to anyone unless it was someone he disliked.

Amidst all the various writing utensils, most of them pens without any ink or highlighters with missing caps, old crumpled up papers and untwisted paper clips, Benedikt found something that he forgot he’d had in his backpack.

Mats’ black jacket was balled up and, to Benedikt’s slight horror, tinged with the scent of fresh mildew after having been unable to dry from the downpour weeks ago. He held it out in front of him and bit his lip, his eyebrows knitting into a tiny frown.

Mats Hummels.

Benedikt buried his face into the material, inhaling the scent of Mats which was still easy to detect between waves of mildew. He could smell marijuana, sweat, and something that was just so uniquely _Mats_.

Benedikt couldn’t tear himself away from that scent.

Forgetting everything about the ‘space’ he had requested from Mats, he whipped out his phone and punched in a text, his breathing becoming shallower at just the thought of the selfish, idiotic yet loving dark haired boy.

_To: mats hummels <3  
I miss you. Do you want to do something tonight?_

After a few minutes with no reply, Benedikt added as an afterthought:

_We don’t have to do anything, I just want to see you. I really miss you and I’m sorry for not being there for you_

He wanted to take Mats’ ankles between his feet. He wanted to caress the veins protruding from Mats’ hands and trace the creases in his palm. He wanted to nudge him and knock their hips together and stick his hands in Mats’ back pockets. He wanted to smile against Mats’ godly yet sinful lips. He wanted to taste that sour yet addicting taste. And he wouldn’t admit it to himself, but he wanted to send Mats over the edge again too, soaking and moaning. He wanted to see the real Mats.

So Benedikt waited. He checked his phone every three minutes while doing his annotations, even though he knew he wouldn’t have a text because the tri-tone hadn’t gone off. But a reply that evening never came.

Benedikt called after he finished all the assigned chapters. It went straight to voicemail, which Mats hadn’t even bothered to set up. It was a shame too because now that he no longer sounded like he was plugging his nose when he talked from his cold, he would’ve been fine with leaving a message. Becoming slightly uneasy, Benedikt considered calling Mats’ house phone just to find out what was going on. He should’ve been back from his therapy session hours ago. But he figured that if something bad had happened again, he would’ve known.

That night in bed, feeling lovesick and pathetic and very much alone, Benedikt dug up an old notebook and a black pen. But before he could jot anything down, he flipped through the notebook to find all the old journal entries he had written when he was younger in the sloppy but still legible handwriting of a child. The pages made a satisfying crinkling noise as he turned them from the deep indents made by the pencil.  

 

> **I slept over at my freinds house today. It WASNT fun. Manu snored SO loud and i was RELLY hungry the whole night because we had OTMEAL 4 dinner and Manu wasn’t even aloud to have nutella with it :( I dont relly like otmeal that much. But Manu is still my BEST freind, I just dont wanna have a sleep over with him agen. Unless he sleeps in the CLOSET!!!!!! Oh and we order pizza with SASUGE! YUM! i LOVE sasuge! Okay bye.**

 

Grimacing in embarrassment just as much as he was amused and wondering why he hadn’t just written the whole entry in capital letters and also what the hell ‘sasuge’ was, Benedikt flipped past the page fast as if to deny its existence and came across another one from a few years ago. His handwriting had straightened out in this one and more closely resembled the thin, half-cursive half-print writing he used today (his spelling also appeared to have improved greatly).  

 

> _Sometimes I wish I had a different dad. I love my dad but a lot of times I don’t think he loves me or even wants me. I heard him and mom talking last night & they were saying how they didn’t think things were working out but that they had me so things would be too complicated if they separated. I have some friends w/ divorced parents, but I never thought it would happen to me. I wonder why they even had me in the first place? Let’s think, I have no siblings, my parents don’t love me...maybe they had me by accident. Or this might sound crazy, but sometimes I think I’m not actually my dad’s kid. Maybe him and mom got married when she already had me or was pregnant. I don’t really look like him at all and it’s like he doesn’t even know how to act around me. When I used to play football they’d never come to my matches, I would always ride with Basti and when I broke my leg a few winters ago and had to have surgery, I wanted them to stay overnight with me in the hospital because I felt like crap but they didn’t. Maybe I’d be happier if they divorced though because maybe the problem is just them and not me. I don’t know, I’m just sounding crazy now._
> 
> _Anyway enough about that...I have an embarrassing story about today, god. I almost had an asthma attack while we were playing dodgeball and it was all because this dick Mats Hummels hit me hard enough in the stomach that my body decided to freak out and not let me breathe. I just remember Mats looking a little horrified at what he’d done before I had to kneel down and I was grabbing my throat and then the teacher blew her whistle to call the game off and she ran over to me, and the whole gym was quiet except for me trying to breathe and the teacher telling me to just hold on cause someone was getting my breather but hello I didn’t have anything to hold on to. I guess I was lucky because the nurse still had my little breather even though I don’t need it anymore and someone brought me it. But it was a foam ball. How did that happen? I’m so pathetic. I already had to quit football and basketball because of my stupid asthma, and now I can’t even do PE. I’m so embarrassed, I don’t even think I can go to school tomorrow but my parents will probably make me. Tell me to suck it up. I can’t really take it personally from Mats though because he does that to a lot of people, only I’m the only one who couldn’t handle it so I guess that’s why he didn’t smirk like he usually does when he hits someone like that. Lukas got a bad nosebleed once but I’m the only one who needs a inhaler. I hate myself for that, I hate how weak I am._
> 
> _Anyway I already wrote a lot today so I’m gonna go...later_

 

Benedikt skimmed the childish entry with chagrin, mulling over what a loser he was and still is. Why would he take the time to write about something that humiliated him in such great detail when no one cared? He had outgrown his breathing issues for the most part before he entered kindergarten, but they still occasionally snuck up on him and after the second trip to the emergency room, Benedikt stopped participating in house league sports, leading his mom to sign him up for the local church choir and art classes instead. Since then, he had quit art but stuck with singing and singing gave him confidence in his breathing since he had to control it so well.

Granted, the constriction on his airways hadn’t happened since that last incident during PE, but it was one of the things he hated most about himself, right beside his crooked teeth and elvish ears. He didn’t even want to think about how easily he fell ill; if there was a bug going around, Benedikt was sure to catch it and it seemed as if he had the sniffles more often than not, though he was starting to think that it may have more to do with his stress levels than his immune system. Benedikt’s fear was that one day running would start making him sick too and he’d have to quit. He’d taken up cross country as a freshman in hopes that his airways could take it and they had done more than he’d ever dreamed of. He was an excellent runner. He didn’t win, but he was always within the top 20 and was usually the only one who didn’t have to hack into the trashcan at least once during intense track workouts. He loved running because it made him feel superior even if the workouts were hell.

The part about his parents was no news, but he had completely forgotten that Mats Hummels had been the one to cause him to embarrass himself in front of all four PE classes that shared the period. So now, not only had Mats indirectly caused him to pass out in front of his peers the other day, but he had directly caused him to lose his breath in front of his peers years ago.

Even before he _knew_ Mats Hummels, Mats Hummels was causing him pain and humiliation.

Finally flipping to a new page, Benedikt gripped his pen and wrote whatever came to his head.

 

> _I’m not quite sure what I’m supposed to write in this stupid journal anyways, but somehow I’m okay with that. Weeks ago, I got assigned to this chemistry project that I was absolutely sure was going to fail with this slacker/druggie kid. Mats Hummels. I thought he was actually quite smart - just lazy, I guess. I tried to get him to work, journal. (God, why am I talking to a journal?) I tried to get him to do something that had to do with chemistry, not weed. It kind of worked, at first. Until, well, he bailed on me. I met this kid Julian, and Manu and I found out that Mats had been taking money from him for, well, I really don’t remember - or know - how long. Trying to figure out why, I went over to his house (he’s neighbors with Jule) to talk to him._
> 
> _I still don’t know why I went alone. I should have went with Manuel, or Julian, or both._
> 
> _Then this might not have happened._
> 
> _Anyways. I went over to Mats’ and made food for his little sister Kira because, well, frankly, he can be a terrible big brother sometimes. He gets lost in his drugs and his pain (I’ll get to that in a bit) and forgets about her. Kira’s an angel, and I think that she deserves Mats’ attention and effort to be a good big brother._
> 
> _A good big brother._
> 
> _Like the kind that cares for his little siblings. Even though it’s not like Mats doesn’t care._
> 
> _It’s more like he doesn’t realize that sometimes what he does can hurt. Really hurt. Really, really hurt, and I hate it, and Kira hates it, and everyone hates it._
> 
> _Back to the story. So Mats finds out that I put his sister to bed and we get all deep and philosophical and we grow closer and closer and closer until the point where I’m scared about what he and I are._
> 
> _Scared, and confused._
> 
> _Because I don’t know what he wants, or what we are._
> 
> _We go on this sweet little coffee date. I thought he was cute, hot, and insane. He thought (well, I think he thought) that I was awkward, a smart-ass, and maybe a little bit cute. Which, I guess, is enough._
> 
> _He’s kind of a pain-in-the-ass, but somehow I deal. He’s selfish and knows nothing about me or where I come from (where do I come from?). This entire stint has been all about him and his problems. But somehow I don’t mind. My time will come._
> 
> _His family is kind of perfect._
> 
> _Mom and Dad, Kira, Mats. Harmonious when they want to be._
> 
> _My own family is nowhere near that, and I absolutely hate that because it’s always just a mad father and a mad mother and a mad, mad, mad Benedikt. (In case you’re wondering, journal, we’re a little more towards the middling ground of “okay” as of when I’m writing this.)_
> 
> _After the coffee date, we start moving._
> 
> _Fast._
> 
> _Soon I find myself at a One Direction concert with him and his sister, singing along to the most teenage-ish, poppy-songs that exist on the radio and end up, well, liking it._
> 
> _The most terrible thing about that stupid concert is the bathroom._
> 
> _God, I don’t know how I got there._
> 
> _We go from “slightly insane” to “fucking complicated” in about, well, fifteen minutes._
> 
> _Because what happened in the bathroom?_
> 
> _Yup. That happened._
> 
> _I end up blowing him._
> 
> _And I don’t swallow, which apparently is some kind of a sin when it comes to blowjobs. Mats, being the blockheaded shit he is, thinks that I’m rejecting him, that he’s hurting me. ALL this shit ensues: I’m ruthlessly abandoned at my own house by him, he takes off running, and the police can’t find him. In my stupid, stupid desperation, I go look for him._
> 
> _I don’t find him. The hospital finds him._
> 
> _And guess what?_
> 
> _I find out that Mats went and tried to carve his own bones out of his body, lacerating his skin and muscles. Double scarring. Because he was already scarred. How selfish can you be?_
> 
> _God._
> 
> _And for some reason, everyone expects me to be okay about all this shit, and that I shouldn’t give him any more drama after what he’s been through. The hospital eventually turns Mats into an outpatient, and all seems well and good, right? That Mats is all better and my life can go back to normal?_
> 
> _No._
> 
> _Of course not._
> 
> _Life doesn’t do that to us._
> 
> _It just doesn’t work that way._
> 
> _The saddest part of this fucking saga is that by this point, he and I are...boyfriends._
> 
> _I fucking hate that word._
> 
> _Because it’s just a word, and it doesn’t mean anything at all._
> 
> _It doesn’t mean trust or success or harmony._
> 
> _It just means, “Oh, I like this guy a little more than I like other guys.”_
> 
> _Nothing more than that._
> 
> _It turns out though, journal, that Mats has some kind of bipolar disorder with touches of anxiety and other shit like that. He started hallucinating at the hospital too, and gets these mild paranoia attacks._
> 
> _God, was I right about him being cute, hot, and insane._
> 
> _I guess I’ll never really know whether I was blessed or absolutely cursed to get Mats as my partner for that stupid lab safety project. I know he’s thankful for me and feels bad for hurting me but it kinda bothers me that he doesn’t show it. And this is kinda stupid and whiny but it bothers me too that he didn’t really take care of me when I was sick except for giving me some Tylenol. He just kinda made fun of me for it. But at least I know he still cares. He just shows it in his own Mats-ish way._
> 
> _And at least I do know that it isn’t completely stupid to give some people a chance, even if ‘some people’ is a dick and also happens to be really hot, really stoned, or really kind._
> 
> _And at least I do know that at the end of the day, love isn’t all so easy as a little four letter word that small children can spell by kindergarten - it’s something a lot more complicated, and sometimes chemistry isn’t enough to explain it. (The pun though!)_
> 
> _Judging by the length of this entry in this stupid old journal, I guess I do need either medical attention or a good, long cuddle._
> 
> _We’ll see about that._
> 
> _So long, and always yours,_
> 
> _~~Bened Benni~~ Benedikt Höwedes_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Credit to Leon for contributing to Benedikt's last letter. I was having trouble with it and he did a brilliant job which I felt the need to add only a few touches to, so thanks to him for that fresh perspective.)
> 
> So that's it -- this is the end! I know I said there would be a sequel, but I've decided against it because it didn't feel right to continue (I did write the first two chapters but you'll never see them hehehehe). Although I do really like high school AU so my next one has a 95% chance of taking place in the same universe with all the same people, only the plot will center around different characters and different challenges.
> 
> That being said, if you've made it all the way to the end: thank you so much. I wouldn't have finished if it hadn't been for you lovely people and your very nice comments that gave the confidence to do so ♥
> 
> Now that we're finished, I'd love to hear your thoughts on the ending or the whole thing in general. Even if you've been quiet till now, it would mean a lot to me to hear from you! Thoughts and feedback of any kind are wonderful for me as I move forward :)


	32. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The REAL epilogue this time and a link to the sequel!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I kinda really hate how this chapter turned out and that's why it took me so long to post cause I was thinking about changing it. But I decided not to only because I wrote it ages ago and I feel like if I changed it I'd be altering the story.
> 
> On a side note: I started a [sequel](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3582072/chapters/7897401) (yes I changed my mind about not writing a sequel) which you can check out if you want. Not sure if I'm going to continue though cause it doesn't really look like people are interested. If you do end up taking a look at it please leave a comment because I need motivation!!
> 
> Thanks for reading (as always) and I hope this doesn't suck as much as I think it does lol. Please let me know what you think because I'm very nervous about this chapter and the sequel :[]

One week later and after seven sertraline tablets had entered his system, Mats was beginning to feel different. He relaxed. He ruminated less. He felt more in control of himself.

On this particular Tuesday, Mats was given permission to drive himself to his program because his parents had to attend a meeting at the school at 9 o’clock to discuss Mats’ progress and if he would be ready to return to school after he completed his three weeks of counseling. Taking advantage of the freedom he was re-granted, Mats texted Benni and asked if they were ready to see each other again. Benni replied that he thought they were. So Mats planned to take a shower and put on some nice clothes when he got home then head straight to Benni’s.

He climbed into his truck at approximately 3:04 PM and plugged in his phone to listen to the album that his admirer from the program had suggested he download and listen to. His favorite song from the album was ‘Blue Eyes Blind’ because it made him think about Benni, even though neither of them had blue eyes.

Over the seven days he’d been attending the treatment program, he’d made two friends. His first friend was Kelly, the chatty girl who’d informed him that another girl in their group thought he was hot. His second friend was the anorexic girl who thought he was hot named Jalina. She was quite shy, but Mats was beginning to pull her out of her shell and she’d even opened up about what kind of music she liked yesterday, leading Mats to download the album he was currently listening to.

Ten minutes into the thirty minute drive home, away from the well-off yet dreary exurbs and closer to the suburbs where Mats lived, he hit a particularly bad patch of traffic on the highway that extended his drive by at least twenty minutes and diminished any chances that he would have time to clean himself up before seeing Benni because as part of the ‘you can drive yourself to your program’ deal, he was also required to pick up Kira from school and watch her so she didn’t have to stay at extended day.

Mats grudgingly accepted the fact that not only would he have to see Benni for the first time in over a week smelling and looking like a skunk, but that he’d also need to drag Benni along to pick up Kira from school.

\-----

All Mats felt was excitement as he knocked on Benedikt’s door.

Not nervous. Not awkward. He was just excited to see Benni. That was all.

Benni flung the door open at almost the same time that Mats first rapped his knuckles against the wood. The blonde stood there in the doorway, taking his lip between his teeth and looking ridiculously adorable wearing a backwards snapback and a worn-out hoodie.

“Hi,” Mats said.

“Hi, Mats,” Benedikt replied politely.

Mats rubbed his sweaty palm on his pants. “Well, are you ready to go?”

Benedikt nodded, still not making eye contact with Mats. He took one step out onto the porch and shut the door behind him before following Mats to his truck and climbing in.

“You can drive with your cast?” Benedikt inquired curiously, clicking his seatbelt in.

“Yep,” Mats replied. He slid on a pair of sunglasses and turned the volume knob all the way down when the music came back on. “I guess I’m not supposed to but I haven’t driven since before I was at the hospital.”

“Ah. Okay.”

Neither of them talked for the first few minutes of the short ride to Kira’s school which was ironic seeing as they had more to talk about than they ever had before. It was certainly an anticlimactic reunion. It was quiet -- a total silence that Mats had not yet experienced with Benni since Benni’s breathing had always been a bit stuffy during the times they’d spent together before. It was weird.

Benedikt fidgeted, a few fast food wrappers crackling beneath his feet. He didn’t even comment on the affinity Mats seemed to have grown for wearing t-shirts with the sleeves cut off.

“You look really cute today,” Mats blurted out and he realized the mistake when it was too late. “I mean, you look cute every day. But especially today. I like the hat. It makes you look kinda edgy since you’re usually so...uhm...cute…”

Mats trailed off awkwardly, the tension in the cab skyrocketing to dangerous heights. Benedikt didn’t laugh or tease Mats for his lack of eloquence. He didn’t even get defensive, which Mats had learned was Benedikt’s specialty.

Mats took a deep breath, preparing to redeem himself. “You know, we had to write acrostic poems using our names at the asylum today. And get this, we were only allowed to use _positive_ words. I was about to nail that thing, but I guess ‘asshole’ doesn’t count as a positive word. I mean, I got off pretty easy since my name only has four letters but I still think it was pretty much the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. It took me basically the entire block to come up with ‘magical’ for ‘M’ and then it was time for white noise. So I listened to white noise for like half an hour -- Benni, are you okay?”

Mats pulled into the parking spot at Kira’s school and killed the engine, leaving a sort of ringing silence throughout the truck even worse than before. Benedikt had undone his seatbelt and was now slumped over with his elbows on his thighs, his hands wrung around the back of his neck.

Mats twisted around so he could extend his non-injured hand and rest his palm on the small of Benni’s back. He pressed his fingertips down lightly. He noted that this was the first time that he’d touched Benni in days, actually felt the sandy-haired boy’s warmth beneath his fingertips.

And then it occurred to him. He had not once asked Benedikt how he was. He had not once offered Benedikt any consolation. He had hardly taken into consideration that Benedikt had been quite sick the past few weeks and still pestered him with his nagging and neediness. Hell, he didn’t even _know_ anything about what was going on in Benedikt’s life. And he had never showed his appreciation for everything Benni had done for him so far, let alone apologized for everything he had done to Benni.

Swallowing the guilt that was brewing up inside of him, Mats came to realize that he was not the only one who had problems. And especially now that he was overcoming his challenges there was no excuse for not being the friend to Benedikt that Benedikt had been to him.

“Benni? What’s the matter? Talk to me.” He scooted in so close that he knocked their knees against one another and accidentally stomped on Benni’s foot -- how that happened, he did not know, but it did happen and made Mats feel even more guilty.

“It’s just my parents. Don’t worry about it. It’s always been like this and there’s nothing I can do to fix it except move out as soon as I can,” Benedikt said glumly.

“What’s going on?”

Benedikt shook his head. “It’s just...a really weird situation. I don’t get along with them, and I know they’ve been trying harder recently but I keep shutting them out. My mom wanted to take me out to eat after I visited you and I just said no.”

Mats thought for a second. He’d never had to give advice before because no one had ever asked him for it. Well, it wasn’t like Benedikt had asked him for it either. But it would be a nice thing to do right now. He trailed his fingers up Benni’s spine, still detectable through his sweatshirt, then back down to lace his fingers through Benni’s pale ones and guided both their hands down to sit against the dip where their legs met. Then Mats offered the best advice he could in the least corny way possible:

“I think you should give them a chance. They love you. What parent doesn’t love their child?”

What a dumb thing to say. Plenty of parents didn’t love their children for plenty of reasons. How insensitive it was of him to make that assumption when he came from a wealthy, stable and loving family.

“A parent whose child is not actually their child,” Benedikt responded listlessly.

While his broken one hung uselessly by his side, Mats squeezed the other boy’s hand with his good one and nestled Benni’s ankle between his own two feet. He ran his thumb over the surface of Benni’s hand, up and down his long fingers and smooth nails which were so unlike Mats’ own brittle ones that he still bit and were framed by loose skin. And then he pried his hand loose and nudged Benedikt’s chin with two fingers to encourage him to look up.

He didn’t fully interpret what Benni had just said until he realized he couldn’t recognize anything behind Benni’s empty hazel eyes.

“What are you saying?” Mats asked, sounding more fearful than comforting.

“He isn’t my biological dad. That’s why we all hate each other so much, because neither of them knew she was pregnant until it was too late. He hates her because he felt like she lied to him even though she didn’t, she hates him because he didn’t get used to me until I was already old enough to figure out how much of a burden I was on him, and they both hate me because they never wanted me and they still don’t. And my mom just told me all this on the phone before you came only because I finally asked her about it.” Benni sounded so freshly hurt that it made Mats’ heart ache for him.

“Hate is a strong word,” Mats said. “They don’t hate each other. They don’t hate you. And...” Mats trailed off. He wanted to tell Benni about what happened to his family after they finally talked about what happened. How good it felt to no longer have any secrets and grudges and how they could now support each other instead of constantly worrying about hiding things from one another to prevent any hurt feelings.

But he didn’t. This wasn’t about him. This was about Benni.

Benni shook his head ever so slightly, sucking in his lips so Mats lifted his chin again.

“And what?” Benni surprised him by saying.

“And...hell, that means we were _both_ accidents Benni. When my dad knocked my mom up, they were probably hoping for just one kid and instead they got two. But that doesn’t mean they don’t want us just because we were accidents. Right? You know, I like to think of it more as a surprise. Like when you get a present. Maybe it’s not something that was in your letter to Santa but you still love it. Right?” Mats rambled, his mouth twisting up and drying the more he talked and the more life came back into Benni’s eyes and the more the corners of them crinkled in amusement.

And maybe it was because by this time, the extended day kids had been let loose onto the playground and were hollering and playing tag right outside the window. Maybe it was because the analogy Mats had just made was so corny but true. Or maybe it was simply because through all the shit that had happened there was still so much to be happy about. But Benni’s lips twisted into a strange smile of sorts and Mats cocked an eyebrow.

“And I still love you even if you smell like a dying rat on drugs.”

Mats burst out laughing at Benni’s comment. It wasn’t really that funny partly because it was painfully true (at least the dying rat part) and partly because it just plain and simple wasn’t funny. But it felt good to laugh because it seemed like there’d been far more tears and not enough laughter throughout this friendship.

Mats’ sunglasses slid off his eyes and up on top of his head as his head fell back in laughter, both his hands finding their way to Benni’s hips now and Benni had to laugh a little too even if he still felt like someone had just dropped a boulder on him.

It was satisfactory even if everything wasn’t just right. They had a long way to go, both with each other and with their own families, but things would be okay.

_Thank you, Benni. Thank you for everything._

**Author's Note:**

> Fic is complete. Thank you so much to everyone who read, left kudos, and commented. It means so much to me <3


End file.
